“The Boys” was Parker Corno’s first professional credit, with IMDb listing his only other credits as “Dutch Kid #1” on the 2019 show “Impulse,” and the role of “Young David Arnold” in the 2022 film “Burden.” This is to say that his acting resume doesn’t allow for a strong showcase of his potential talent, and given the increased presence of Ryan Butcher in the subsequent seasons, the actor playing him needed to have some serious acting chops. Corno may be a very talented young actor, but without a resume to show that he can truly handle the material, “The Boys” creative team likely needed to hedge its bets on someone with more experience.
Enter: Cameron Crovetti.
While Crovetti looks quite a bit more like Shantel VanSanten’s Becca than he does Antony Starr’s Homelander, he’s got an imposing resume. Before joining “The Boys” in 2020, Crovetti had some high-profile credits to his name, and those have only expanded in the years since. He and his brother Nicholas played twins Josh and Max Wright in the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” something the pair would do again as twins Elias and Lukas in the American remake of the Austrian horror film “Goodnight Mommy.” He’s clearly very comfortable working in genres that boast violence, anguish, and buckets of blood.
Ryan Butcher is one of the most complicated roles on “The Boys,” as the teenager is navigating superpowers he didn’t know he had, the realization that his father is the most powerful man on Earth, and at the end of season 2, Ryan accidentally kills his mother Becca with his uncontrolled heat ray vision while trying to protect her from the alt-right Supe, Stormfront. These are seriously intense and emotionally demanding situations requiring a very talented young actor to pull off. Crovetti was the right call, even if he looks wildly different from Corno.
