The Boys' Antony Starr Once Played A Biblical Superhero On A Hit Action TV Series

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Antony Starr has firmly cemented his place in television history. The actor had already created a villain for the ages in Homelander prior to "The Boys" Season 5 revealing the character's disturbing final plan in full. But long before he played a super-villain on the beloved superhero series, Starr actually portrayed a superhero (in a sense) on a whole other long-running TV show ... one that his eventual "The Boys" co-star Karl Urban was on, no less.

The series in question: "Xena: Warrior Princess." Over the span of six seasons that aired from 1995 to 2001, the show followed Lucy Lawless as the titular Xena as she sought redemption for her dark past. Joined by the bard Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor), Xena journeyed across the series' ancient setting, all the while doing her best to fight for the greater good.

Starr originally showed up in the "Xena: Warrior Princess" Season 1 episode "Hooves and Harlots" as a centaur named Mesas. More notably, however, the actor played a very different, and decidedly well-known, character in a Season 2 episode titled "The Giant Killer." As one might guess, this episode was a riff on the Biblical tale of David and Goliath. Here, though, Goliath (Todd Rippon) is an old friend of Xena's who has turned evil following the loss of his family, with Starr playing David.

Interestingly, the episode was written by Terence Winter, who would go on to collaborate with Martin Scorsese on the acclaimed TV series "Boardwalk Empire" (which Winter created), in addition to writing the Scorsese-directed "The Wolf of Wall Street." Winter has since become something of a TV legend, with Starr having similarly enjoyed a very healthy career. Nevertheless, roughly 30 years ago, the pair teamed up to retell one of our great stories about good triumphing over evil.

You can watch the main confrontation between Anthony Starr's David and Todd Rippon's Goliath above. Understandably, the epicness of it all was somewhat hampered by the relatively low network TV budgets and visual effects constraints of the day. But even though the actor was much younger back then, Starr's version of David has the same eyes that "The Boys" fans will recognize as belonging to Homelander.

Of course, this is far from the only time that this Biblical tale has been retold cinematically over the years. Back in 2011, future "Sinister" and "Doctor Strange" director Scott Derrickson was even set to call the shots on a movie titled "Goliath," which would have starred Taylor Lautner and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as David and Goliath, respectively. The film never actually came to pass, but it's still interesting to imagine the guy from "Twilight" and The Rock duking it out in a big-budget blockbuster 15 years later. 

Anyway, I digress. A "Xena: Warrior Princess" reboot series was axed by NBC in 2017 after spending a couple of years in development. The original show was enormously popular in its day and has retained a loyal following, but perhaps some things are best left in the past.

As for Starr, he's beginning to line up some post-"The Boys" projects. That includes a new Netflix TV show called "Breakers," as well as a film biopic about Jean-Michel Basquiat that's titled "Samo Lives" and being directed by Julius Onah ("Captain America: Brave New World").

You can grab "Xena: Warrior Princess – The Complete Series" on DVD from Amazon.