The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Valorie Curry (The Tick, The Lost Symbol), the actress who plays the right-wing conspiracy theorist supe Firecracker in The Boys’ fourth season to discuss her portrayal of the character. As a lesbian, Curry stands in stark contrast to the divisive firecracker.

Despite this contrast, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Curry was actually deeply drawn to play the character. “It sounds so gross to say, but I really connected with her right off the bat,” says Curry […] it should be somebody from the community who’s getting to make a clown out of her. So there isn’t any ambiguity.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Curry was surprised by some of the cultural connections. “The show satirizes so much of what’s happening culturally, whether it’s #MeToo or the Republican Party,” she said. Even when she thought that something was too outlandish to be real, she would ask showrunner Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Timeless) about it, “He’d tell me, ‘That’s actually a direct quote [from a politician].’”

Beyond her character, one of the elements of the series that she appreciates is one of the longtime characters being revealed as bisexual. “I love casual bisexuality in TV, in books, when somebody is just dating one person and they are dating another and we don’t even need to talk about it. It just is.”

Despite Firecracker’s offensive nature, Curry did find a human element of the character to connect with. “As an actor, our first job isn’t to judge our characters,” she says. Curry explained that “childhood trauma” is at the root of Firecracker’s actions and mindset: In the series’ third episode, Firecracker reveals that her hatred of Starlight, played by Erin Moriarty (True Detective, Jessica Jones), comes from a childhood superhero pageant where Starlight, spurred on by her overly competitive mother, spread false sexual rumors about her to shame her. “Right or wrong, she’s someone who believes she’s been marginalized.”

The full interview can be read here.