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It’s rare that an actor gets to live and breathe a character for as long as Colby Minifie has with Ashley Barrett in Amazon’s satirical superhero drama The Boys. For seven years, she has walked in the stylish stilettos of Vought International’s deceptive publicist turned vice president, witnessing the perils that come with ascending the corporate ladder in a corrupt world run by dangerous supes (the name given to the show’s superheroes) while trying to hold on to any remaining humanity she has left. To be able to grow and evolve with a character over five smartly written and carefully planned seasons is #actorgoals. That kind of time can have transformative effects on a person—as was the case for Minifie. Alas, all good things must come to an end.
“It doesn’t feel like we’ve said goodbye yet,” Minifie tells me over Zoom. Production wrapped on the show’s final season last June, but there’s still the finale event in L.A. next month, which will serve as the last hurrah for the cast and crew. Seated in front of a gorgeous wood shelving unit she built herself with her ceramic wares (more on those later) on display, the actress reminisces on the lifelong family she made on The Boys. Working away from home in Toronto and on a show that asks a lot of its actors will do that. Being covered in blood and goo all the time “is a bonding experience,” she laughs.
When she first landed the project, Minifie couldn’t have imagined the journey The Boys would take her on both professionally and personally. “First of all, just the fact that they gave me this chance feels really surreal and very special, and [it’s] the kind of thing that all actors dream about,” she says. What started out as a small recurring role (“Ashley gets fired in season 1—that was supposed to be her end,” she says) evolved methodically into a “fan-favorite series regular” role, bringing with it a new sense of confidence for the New York City native. “There’s an internal thing of even just feeling like you’re worth somebody signing a contract with you for six years,” she says. “I think it happened for me in the best way because I really felt like I belonged with this cast, like I earned it.”
Ashley’s continued and growing presence on the show over five seasons is no doubt a testament to Minifie’s fantastic performance playing the morally complex Vought corporate climber. Ashley does awful things, yet glimpses of a real human being under a tough exterior keep you rooting for her. If only she could get out from underneath Homelander’s oppressive thumb. “I think people connect to Ashley because they’ve all had a shitty boss,” Minifie says. “We all have coping mechanisms with how to deal with that kind of stress. People root for her because they want her to find a way out of this because they want to find a way out for themselves. We’re all in the rat race of capitalism.”
By the end of season 4, Ashley is forced to make a decision. She can either leave Vought with her secrets and risk having Homelander find and kill her or take Compound V (a substance that gives humans superpowers) and stay with the devil she knows. Spoiler alert: She chooses the latter.
Ashley’s superpower—which is finally revealed in episode 2 of season 5—is, well, humbling, to say the least.
Ashley gains telepathic powers by way of a sentient tumor on the back of her head, a second Ashley named Bashley who can read minds and acts as her moral compass, voicing the things Ashley is afraid to say out loud. As far as superpowers go, it’s far from “cool.”
“I think that superpower is so perfect for her. She is quite two-faced,” Minifie says. “And she has this voice that has been trying to reach her from inside for so long. When they told me about Bashley, it was very exciting, especially getting the opportunity to explore who that is. We were talking about how it’s kind of a Sliding Doors moment for Ashley. Bashly is the version of her that, if her mom hadn’t died at 17, this is who she would have become. She needed a mother; she needed guidance. She needed somebody to ask her, ‘Hey, are you okay?’ She needed to know that somebody loved her. That person is who Bashley is, someone who’s like her college-aged self—domestic and naïve about the way of the world but also has hope. It was so fun to get to play that side of her. I was trying all different kinds of voices and stuff to see who that person would be. I initially wanted her to sound like Fran Lebowitz.”
When I ask Minifie if she feels the writers did right by Ashley in the end, she tells me the trajectory felt both proper and really satisfying: “I remember finishing reading the finale being like, ‘Oh wow! Yeah, that’s the end.'”
Looking back on the experience, Minifie isn’t just walking away with a career-defining role under her belt. Working on The Boys also helped her find her voice on set; gave her a renewed relationship with her body and fashion thanks to costume designer Michael Ground, who she tells me literally changed her life; and turned her onto a new side passion as a craftswoman. To settle her workhorse brain and pass the time between filming, Minifie took up ceramics, woodworking, and crocheting, hobbies she still partakes in today.
With this long chapter coming to a close, Minifie has her sights set firmly on a future where she’s doing a bit of everything. She tells me she’s eager to start producing and hints at a project she’s got in the works but can’t really talk about right now. She wants to do comedy. She wants to do drama. She wants to do something that is grounded in reality. But she is also open to a different kind of heightened material too. If she’s learned anything from being in this business since the age of 12, it’s to be open to wherever it might take you.
“I remember when I read The Boys. I was like, ‘What’s this superhero shit?’ And look where we are,” she says. “We just did the premiere in Rome, and it was the most epic thing, and I got to be there. Who the fuck am I to judge these things that come my way?”
There is no right answer for how to navigate this artistic endeavor for Minifie, but she tells me she is down for whatever writing turns her on. “I’ll know it when I see it,” she says.
Catch new episodes of The Boys every Wednesday on Prime Video.
Photographer: Emily Soto
Stylist: Morgan Greer Lipsiner
Hairstylist: María Pélo
Makeup Artist: Aya Tariq
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