The Boys’ Erin Moriarty Had Staph Infection While Filming Sex Scene

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Erin Moriarty was fighting off a different kind of villain behind the scenes of The Boys.

The actress, who portrayed heroine Annie January—also known by her superhero alias Starlight—in all five seasons of the dark comedy, recently shared that she struggled on set with her Graves’ disease diagnosis, which partially led to a serious staph infection.

“I had one night for example early on in the show, season two, where I was so run down that I developed a really, really bad staph infection,” Moriarty recalled during a June 30 appearance on Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Christina Applegate’s MeSsy podcast. “I couldn’t move my right arm but I had a night shoot and I told production.”

The 32-year-old recalled, “I was like, ‘Guys, I have a second head growing out of my armpit—even if we wanted to go through with this, this is what it looks like.’"

But the show must go on—and Moriarty noted that she ended up going through with the scene, shot alongside Jack Quaid’s Hughie Campbell, who played her love interest for most of the series.

One caveat though? She didn’t move one of her arms.

“I still made it through the night shoot,” she noted. “I couldn’t move my right arm and that’s one example of many times when my identifier was, ‘I suck it up, that is who I am.’ I suck it up for work. I show up, I do a good job.”

At the time, Moriarty considered it her mission to be a hero when it came to pain.

“I dipped so badly in my health while I was filming,” she said elsewhere during the podcast. “I realized this, but I didn’t mind it. My identifier going through this autoimmune illness was that I would suffer for my art.”

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As she put it, “I would transcend whatever physical ailments I was going through.”

However, that meant Moriarty was rolling through some particularly rough punches.

“I can be in hell,” she recalled thinking, “I can be afraid that maybe I won’t wake up tomorrow because I’ve got a really invasive staph infection and I can’t move my right arm. But I will show up and I will do whatever I have to do to show that I’m a good sport and a good player.”

It wasn’t until the last season of shooting that Moriarty decided to get her health in order—but it was a friend who ended up saving her.

“My best friend is the one who saw me and knows who I am and said, ‘You need to get your blood work done now,’” she added. “And I looked at him and I went, ‘You’re right.’”

Moriarty was ultimately diagnosed with Graves’ disease—which affects the thyroid gland—in 2025, which she said brought her clarity after years of suffering.

“I hope the transparency surrounding my symptoms can help even one person catch their illness earlier than I caught mine,” Moriarty wrote in an essay for TIME in May. “The body speaks long before it screams. Listen to yourself before your body is forced to scream loud enough for the world to hear it, too."

For more stars who have shared insight into health struggles, keep reading…

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