Best of 2022 (Behind the Scenes): Brett Geddes, the pint-sized Termite on The Boys , gets his big break
Canadian actor Brett Geddes reached a potentially awkward moment on his first date with his now-girlfriend. They were walking through the area surrounding the Parliament buildings in his home city of Ottawa when a standard question came about: "What do you do for work?" When your job is on a show like The Boys, the answer is never dull.
He remembers telling her, "Oh yeah, I was naked on set. I was jumping into this penis." He adds, "I was just so excited to tell her about it."
Fortunately, it wasn't a deal-breaker and they went on to have many more dates, but the actor admits his life has been dominated by dick ever since filming his scene-stealing role of the size-shrinking Termite for The Boys season 3 back in 2020. "A friend of mine messaged me a little while ago," Geddes recalls. "He was like, 'I've never seen someone post so many giant penises on their [Instagram] Stories in my entire life.'"
Amazon Prime Brett Geddes, the actor how played Termite on 'The Boys' season 3, reveals all about his scene-stealing role.
Much had been made about "Herogasm," the adaptation of the supe orgy in the original The Boys comics, in the weeks leading up to the third season premiere. Audiences were blissfully unaware of the sequence that would come to rival that R-rated debauchery right in the opening episode, which dropped on Amazon's Prime Video platform on June 3.
Geddes debuted as Termite, a supe with the ability to alter 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 supe dry humps Barbie in front of Ken in a child's dollhouse for the amusement of his guests. He then goes in the backroom to snort cocaine with his boyfriend, played by actor Jarrett Siddall. "I want you inside me," his beau says. Since this is The Boys, he doesn't mean what you think he means.
Termite proceeds to shrink down small enough so he can dive through the hole of his lover's penis, which is flopped out 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 back to normal size, exploding his boyfriend from the inside.
To pull this off, the behind-the-scenes crew built an 11-foot-high, 30-foot-long prosthetic penis for Geddes to propel through. The sequence, which was shot over a little more than a week, was Geddes first scene when he arrived on set — and his first time getting naked in this way.
Courtesy of Brett Geddes Brett Geddes poses for the camera in his birthday suit on the set of 'The Boys' season 3.
Geddes had originally auditioned for The Boys back in season 2, but didn't land any of the parts. He put himself forth for the bit role of a man fleeing a robbery who's killed by Homelander (Antony Starr) in an alley as the supe then copulates with Stormfront (Aya Cash) on his dead body. He also auditioned for the man who, warped by Stormfront's fear-mongering, fatally shoots a convenience store clerk, thinking he's an illegal supe. A bigger part Geddes tried out for was Blue Hawk, the cop supe who gets in trouble for killing an unarmed Black man.
His time finally came with Termite. "This was just a normal audition for me," Geddes says of the anything-but-normal gig. "I got a self-tape request. The only difference was that there was a height requirement for it, which was like 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 in order to jump into the penis."
The first phase of the audition consisted of three lines of dialogue, but it was mostly Geddes dry humping the air on a self-tape. (Geddes mentions he would later dry hump the life-size Barbie for the dollhouse bit so much that he wore down the skin of the prop: "They showed me a picture of it. I actually skinned it right down. 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 during the aftermath of the penis explosion.
"The only other thing about that one," Geddes notes of that part of the audition, "was that they wanted to make sure everyone knew like, 'We're not sure exactly what we're gonna show right now, but odds are you are going to be naked. Are you comfortable with that?'"
Geddes, admittedly, was a bit apprehensive for the nudity when he arrived on location in Canada. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the production had issues with flying Capone into the country, so those scenes with Geddes kept getting postponed. They decided to throw Geddes right into the fire with the giant penis.
"Nothing can prepare you for walking on set and seeing an 11-foot penis that they've built for you," he says, once again laughing at how absurd he sounds describing his work life.
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 was expecting from the scripts. The crew lubed up the giant Johnson for easy... um, access. A camera was fitted inside the genitalia set on a pulley system that could move and track Geddes as he popped through the urethral opening. "The other insane thing was that they had projectors on each side shooting a projection of the blood going through it," Geddes remembers.
He finally got to wear something for the proceeding beats. Still no clothes, though. The episode's director, Phil Sgriccia, wanted Geddes to "look like Carrie" after Termite bursts forth from his boyfriend. The actor was coated in buckets of fake blood. The sequence also called for fake cocaine. A tussle with Frenchie and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) leads Butcher (Karl Urban) to scoop up Termite in a dime bag of drugs. The camera offers a close up of the supe as his tormenter gives him a few shakes.
Termite's choking in that scene was legitimate. Pieces of the fake material would fly into Geddes' mouth as he jumped around on a medium-sized trampoline lined in a plastic covering. A shaved potato material was used to emulate flurries of coke swirling around him. "They just wanted me to like flip, do some jumps, bang against the walls," he says. "But because it was enclosed, this potato stuff, while you're in there, you're breathing it in."
Some of the other requirements of the Termite part were easier to pull off. One was a photoshoot with Geddes, who had to shoot fake posters for Termite movies 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 permission from the beer company. "It was me leaning against a bottle of Budweiser when I'm small. Something like, 'Small calories, big taste' or something like that was the slogan," he says.
By the time Geddes showed up later during filming for the "Herogasm" episode, he was much more comfortable getting naked in front of people. After day one on set, he felt like "old news" and could have more fun. It's also helped with his more standard work, which includes Lifetime original movies and made-for-TV Christmas fair.
"Wardrobe's usually like, 'We have a little pod for you to go change in,' and I'm just so, 'If everyone's comfortable, I'll just drop trou right here,'" Geddes says. "It's all good."
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