Amazon’s The Boys series gives movie star Karl Urban a chance to cut loose – and a chance to use a baby’s eyes as lasers. And now the Star Trek and Dredd star has been chatting about the experience.

Speaking to Collider, Urban was asked if he is having a blast playing this role. “Yeah, I am,” he admitted. “I’m having so much fun playing this character. When I read the first episode, it was pretty clear to me that Billy Butcher was quite a trip and quite unlike anything I’d done before. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity.”

As for what drew him to the project, Urban recalls feelings very “accustomed to these tentpole event movies, and these big superhero movies, and when I read the script [for The Boys], I thought, “Wait a minute, this is fresh. This is something new. I haven’t seen this done like this before.”

The eight-episode series is based on the comic of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, but Urban is happy that some changes were made during the transition to TV.

He told Collider: “it had to be that way. There are some elements of the comic that are just not palatable for television, at all, and certainly not, if you want to reach a wider audience, which is the goal of any television.”

The Boys, in all its wacky glory, is available to stream on Amazon now.