‘Gen V’ Actor Derek Luh on Sharing Bigender Role With London Thor and Showing Two Sides of Jordan’s Romance With Marie
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “Gen V, titled “Guardians of Godolkin,” now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.
You’ve had a week since the “Gen V” Season 1 finale to theorize about where Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Andre (Chance Perdomo), Jordan (Derek Luh/London Thor) and Emma (Lizze Broadway) are at the end of “The Boys” spinoff’s cliffhanger episode. So, do you have a plausible explanation for the medical facility with no doors that the four supes are stuck in?
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It’s OK, we don’t either, and just like “Gen V” showrunner Michele Fazekas, star Luh is no help to us by keeping his lips sealed — even though he’s finally allowed to talk about the Amazon series after the SAG-AFTRA strike ended — and refusing to be the spoiler-ific Tom Holland of the Vought Cinematic Universe.
“You’re trying to get me in trouble. I see what you’re trying to do. I will not spoil it. What I can tell you is tune into Season 2!” Luh told Variety in an interview Thursday, just a few days after the first look at “The Boys” Season 4 was released.
In creating the role of Godolkin University student Jordan, Luh split his acting duties with Thor, taking on the male and female forms, respectively, of the bigender supe.
“We got so fortunate that me and London are so similar and so different, which I think is beautiful for Jordan, because what we really wanted to show was, in Jordan’s male form, I’m a little more reserved, a little less confident, less confrontational,” Luh said. “And in Jordan’s female form, they have more swag and are a little more punk rock and a little more confrontational and have that dry humor. The way we describe it is that the female Jordan is the mask that we wear. And then when we’re in our male form, that mask is off and it’s like an open wound.”
Jordan is a supe who has different abilities in their male and female form, and Luh notes he sees Jordan’s powers as the “opposite” of their emotional state when they are taking on a specific gender.
“I’m impenetrable, immovable, invulnerable, nothing can get to me in my superpower,” Luh says of Jordan’s male side. “But as my emotional being, I’m actually very vulnerable and very emotional and very sensitive. It’s a good take on, in society, as a man you’re supposed to be tough and not feel your emotions.”
Aside from the superpower split, Luh and Thor had different parts to play when it came to Jordan’s budding romance with Marie throughout the first season of “Gen V.”
“For me and London, we discussed how Jordan was a little more uncomfortable in our female form because we didn’t know if Marie liked us in our female form,” Luh said. “You see most of the kissing and intimate scenes in the male form because we think that’s what she wants. In Episode 5, we talk about how our first girlfriend only wanted us to be in our male form. So I think we played it like London in her female form is very cautious about being too forward with that, and then in Jordan’s male form, I was definitely more vulnerable and more open to showing Marie affection.”
Luh remarked on how while he and Thor had to create their side of the relationship together, Sinclair was tasked with treating them each the same on camera to show Marie’s affections for Jordan as one person, regardless of their physical gender in a scene.
“It’s hard enough to have chemistry with one actor, let alone two, and make it just seamless, so credit to Jaz for that,” Luh said. “We discussed with Jaz who Jordan is in their male form and in their female form and then kind of let her create her relationship from that. As you see in Episode 7, when Marie says, you don’t have to turn into a dude to get your point across, it’s her treating us exactly the same because she calls us out. And after — sorry to be graphic, but it is ‘The Boys’ — she blows Rufus’ penis off, she’s calling us out and says, when do you care about anybody but Jordan? It’s great she didn’t treat us differently in our female or male form.”
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