‘The Boys’ Star Laz Alonso Reveals He Once Asked Amazon if They Had Digitally Added Weight to His Promo Photos

One of the more quietly fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from ‘The Boys’ involves no superpowers, no showrunner drama, and no leaked scripts. It is just Laz Alonso, a promo poster, and a moment of genuine self-shock.

The actor, who plays Mother’s Milk across all five seasons of the Prime Video series, has opened up about the personal journey behind one of the show’s most talked-about physical transformations.

Speaking to Men’s Health, Alonso explained that he intentionally went on a caloric surplus at the start of the show, wanting to physically match the comic book version of his character during the first two seasons. The strategy worked, up until the pandemic changed the production environment entirely.

During Season 3, which was shot during and after COVID-era shutdowns, Alonso found himself leaning heavily into food delivery apps while filming in Toronto, discovering the city’s best pizza and burger joints in the process. The habit gradually added around 40 pounds to his frame without him noticing. The moment of recognition, when it finally came, was equal parts funny and sobering.

I was heavy on caloric surplus when I first started the show. Season 1 and 2, I wanted to look like the comic. Season 3, we shot during and after COVID and I went from looking like the comic to looking like a very inflated version of the comic.

Uber Eating every day, eating a lot of pizza, eating a lot of burgers. I discovered Toronto’s best pizzas and burgers. I put on close to 40lbs. It didn’t hit me until I saw the promotional posters for season 3 and I saw my face. I was like, ‘Who the heck is that?’ I actually asked Amazon if they had added weight to me. I didn’t realise how big I had gotten. For a guy that’s six feet, with shoes on, I was pushing 250lbs and it was a lot of weight.

When the promotional posters for Season 3 were released, Alonso saw his own face and genuinely did not recognize himself. His immediate reaction was to contact Amazon and ask whether they had digitally altered his appearance, believing the image must have been manipulated. It had not been. He was, as he later put it, simply pushing 250 pounds and calling it “Mother’s Butter Milk.”

It wasn’t healthy. Before season 4 came around, I wanted to do something real different. I always meet with [Eric] Kripke at the top of the season and he told me, ‘This season, Mother’s Milk is gonna go through a big transition’ so I wanted to, in his OCD fashion, to depict that and show that visibly. I went into an extreme calorie reduction. I shaved because now he reports directly to the White House.

The wake-up call led Alonso to meet with showrunner Erik Kripke ahead of Season 4, where he learned that Mother’s Milk would be going through a significant personal transition, stepping into a more disciplined leadership role within the team. Alonso saw the storyline as the perfect opportunity to match the internal change with an external one, and went into an extreme calorie reduction ahead of filming.

The transformation was so dramatic that many fans watching Season 4 assumed the character had been recast, and some expressed concern that the change resembled the appearance of an actor dealing with illness. Alonso moved to address that concern directly, making clear in his Men’s Health interview that the shift was entirely his own decision, driven by both personal health goals and a desire to reflect his character’s arc on screen.

The story is a reminder of how much the physical reality of a long-running production can diverge from what audiences see on screen, and how easily the line between craft and life can blur during years of continuous filming. For Alonso, what started as a character-driven dietary choice quietly became something he needed to address for himself. The promo poster just happened to be the moment it clicked.

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