Canadian actor Brett Geddes had a potentially awkward moment on his first date with his now-girlfriend. They were walking around the State Houses area in his hometown of Ottawa when a standard question arose: “What do you do for a living?” When your job is on a show like The Boys, the answer is never boring.
He recalls telling her, “Oh yeah, I was naked on set. I jumped in that penis.” He adds, “I was so excited to tell her about it.”
Luckily it wasn’t a deal-breaker and they went on many more dates, but the actor admits his life has been dominated by cock ever since he filmed his scene-stealing role of the shrinking termite for season 3 of The Boys back in 2020. “A friend of mine sent me a message a while back,” Geddes recalls. “He was like, ‘I’ve never seen anyone put so many huge penises on themselves [Instagram] Stories from all my life.'”
The boys, Brett Geddes
Amazon Prime Brett Geddes, the actor who played Termite on Season 3 of The Boys, reveals all about his scene-stealing role.
In the weeks leading up to the Season 3 premiere, much had been made about Herogasm, the adaptation of the super orgy from the original The Boys comics. Luckily, audiences were unaware of the sequence that would rival that R-rated debauchery right in the opening episode, which aired June 3 on Amazon’s Prime Video platform.
Geddes debuted as Termite, a supe with the ability to change his size, just like Marvel’s Ant-Man or DC’s Atom. Our first impression of the guy comes during a house party, where the super dry Barbie humps in front of Ken in a kid’s dollhouse for the amusement of his guests. He then goes into the back room to snort cocaine with his friend, played by actor Jarrett Siddall. “I want you inside me,” says his friend. Since this is The Boys, he doesn’t mean what you think he means.
Termite continues to shrink so small that he can dive through the hole in his lover’s penis lying on the table and stimulate his partner from the inside. An accidental sneeze caused by all the drugs tickling his nostrils forces Termite to revert to his normal size, causing his friend to explode from the inside out.
The story goes on
To pull this off, the crew behind the scenes built an 11-foot-tall, 30-foot-long prosthetic penis for Geddes to propel through. The sequence, which was filmed over a little over a week, was Gedde’s first scene when he arrived on set – and his first time stripping in this way.
The Young Brett Geddes
Courtesy of Brett Geddes Brett Geddes poses for the camera on the set of Season 3 of The Boys in his birthday suit.
Geddes originally auditioned for The Boys in Season 2 but didn’t get any of the roles. He took on the small role of a man fleeing a robbery who is killed by Homelander (Antony Starr) in an alley while the supe then copulates with Stormfront (Aya Cash) on his corpse. He’s also auditioned for the man who, distorted by Stormfront’s fear-mongering, fatally shoots a supermarket clerk because he thinks he’s an illegal supe. A bigger role Geddes tried for was Blue Hawk, the police officer Supe who gets in trouble for killing an unarmed black man.
His time finally came with Termite. “It was just a normal audition for me,” says Geddes of the anything but normal performance. “I received a self-adhesive request. The only difference was that there was a height requirement which was about 5ft 8 to 5ft 10 to jump in the penis.”
The first phase of the audition consisted of three lines of dialogue, but it was mainly Geddes hobbling the air dry on a self-tape. (Geddes mentions that he later dry-buckled the life-size Barbie for the dollhouse play so much that he wore down the prop’s skin: “They showed me a picture of it. I actually pulled it right off. They had to put more on.”) The second phase was more emotional: capturing Termite’s screams at Frenchie, Tomer Capone’s character, who walks in after the penis explodes.
“The only other thing about that one,” Geddes notes of that part of the audition, “was they wanted to make sure everyone knew, ‘We’re not sure what we’re going to show right now, but chances are you.’ will be naked Are you comfortable with that?'”
Geddes admittedly was a bit worried about the nudity when he arrived on location in Canada. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the production had trouble flying Capone into the country, so those scenes with Geddes kept getting pushed back. They decided to throw Geddes straight into the fire with the giant penis.
“Nothing can prepare you to walk on set and see an 11-foot penis that they built for you,” he says, laughing once again at how absurd it sounds when he describes his working life.
The Young Brett Geddes
Courtesy of Brett Geddes Brett Geddes is decked out in fake blood and cocaine on The Boys.
The penis was much more realistic than he expected from the scripts. The crew bribed the giant Johnson for easy…er, access. A camera was mounted in the genitals, attached to a pulley system that could move and track Geddes as he shot through the urethral opening. “The other crazy thing was they had projectors on each side that shot a projection of the blood running through them,” Geddes recalls.
He finally got to wear something for the progressive beats. Still no clothes. Episode director Phil Sgriccia wanted Geddes to “look like Carrie” after Termite erupted from his friend. The actor was covered in buckets of fake blood. The sequence also called for counterfeit cocaine. A fight with Frenchie and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) leads to Butcher (Karl Urban) finding Termite in a dime bag full of drugs. The camera offers a close-up of Supe as his tormentor shakes him a few times.
Termite’s choking in this scene was legitimate. Pieces of the fake material flew into Gedde’s mouth as he bounced around on a medium-sized trampoline lined with a plastic sleeve. A shaved potato material was used to mimic coke fluff swirling around it. “They just wanted me to like flips, do some jumps and smack the walls,” he says. “But because it was locked up, that potato stuff, while you’re in there, you breathe it in.”
Some of the other requirements of the Termite part were easier to meet. One was a photo shoot with Geddes, who had to shoot fake posters for Termite films like Pocket Romance, Big Heart, and Crazy Love I and II. Some of these posters can be seen in the background of Season 3 episodes. He also shot a fake Budweiser ad with the beer company’s permission. “It was me when I was little and leaning on a Budweiser bottle. Something like ‘small calories, big taste’ or something like that was the slogan,” he says.
When Geddes later showed up during the filming of the “Herogasm” episode, he felt much more comfortable stripping in front of people. After the first day on set, he felt like “old news” and could have more fun. It’s also helped with his standard work, which includes Lifetime original films and a made-for-television Christmas market.
“Wardrobe usually says, ‘We have a little capsule you can change in,’ and I’m just like, ‘If everyone’s comfortable, I’ll just drop them here,'” says Geddes. “Everything is good.”
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