Why Victoria Neuman From The Boys Looks So Familiar
Bloody, profane, and downright diabolical, Amazon's The Boys is a truly twisted superhero story that packs a punch thanks to its sly social commentary. The show centers on two clashing teams: the Seven, the world's mightiest and most dysfunctional superheroes, and the Boys, a group of vigilantes working to bring the dangerous heroes down. As the title suggests, many of the main characters are men — including Homelander (Antony Starr), the sociopathic leader of the Seven, and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), an ex-CIA operative who despises "Supes."
Despite the central conflict revolving around Homelander and Butcher's searing hatred of one another, The Boys is full of richly drawn female characters like the truly heroic Starlight (Erin Moriarty); Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), who is basically a disillusioned Wonder Woman with a drinking problem; the silent and deadly Kimiko/the Female (Karen Fukuhara); and progressive congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit). Doumit's Neuman joined the cast of The Boys for season 2, set for release on Amazon Prime Video on September 4, and will add a new wrinkle to the definitely evil Vought corporation's push for superheroes to become official, government-sanctioned defenders of America.
Fans of The Boys comic book series by Garth Ennis, on which the show is based, know that the Neuman character has undergone some major changes in the jump from book to screen. In the comics, Victoria is Victor, the dimwitted former CEO of Vought International and Vice President of the United States. Victor is easily manipulated, and is intended to be a parody of George W. Bush. By contrast, Victoria is an outspoken liberal who opposes superheroes interfering with government matters.
If you're wondering why the actress who plays Victoria Neuman on The Boys looks so familiar, it's because she's no stranger to genre television. Here's where you've seen Claudia Doumit before.
Claudia Doumit was part of the Lifeboat team on NBC's beloved Timeless
The Boys series creator Eric Kripke is clearly a fan of Doumit. Before he created one of Amazon's most successful shows, Kripke co-created the time travel drama Timeless with Shawn Ryan for NBC. During its two-season run from 2016 to 2018, the show about a trio of time travelers attempting to prevent the dangerous Rittenhouse organization from altering American history garnered a passionate fanbase, but it also managed to get canceled twice.
Throughout the show's main run and its follow-up two-part series finale, Doumit starred as Jiya Marri, an engineer who helps build the time machine that ferries the core Lifeboat team of Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter), and Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett) across the breadth of American history. On Timeless' first season, Jiya mostly stays at home base while the team travels through time — but when she finally joins her friends for a spin in the time machine, she begins to have visions and premonitions of the future.
Her gifts become instrumental to the team on season 2, even as they led to seizures and other health scares for Jiya. Most importantly, the character's leveling up allowed Doumit to show off her acting chops. The new layers added to her Star Trek-loving engineer character paid off, making her a fan favorite for the duration of the short-lived genre series.
Claudia Doumit brought to life a popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare character
Okay, so technically you can't see Doumit in her typical, non-CGI physical form in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but she did perform motion-capture work and provide her distinctive voice for the character of Farah Karim. As one of three primary protagonists and playable characters, Farah is an integral part of the video game. The rebel commander of Urzikstan Liberation Force is fiercely protective of her people, and the loyalty she inspires in her followers strikes fear in the hearts of the Russian operatives tasked with bringing her down.
Though playing a character in a video game is different than playing one on a TV series, Farah is actually one of Doumit's favorite characters that she's played so far. In a December 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actress, who is of Lebanese descent, shared how meaningful it is to give voice to a Middle Eastern hero. "To be able to play a Middle Eastern woman like my role models is very special to me," she said. "You don't realize how much it means to you until you are playing a character that you thought would never be written."
Claudia Doumit had a small but memorable role on Supergirl
The Boys isn't Doumit's first brush with superheroes. She also appeared on a season 2 episode of the CW's Supergirl, entitled "Ace Reporter." Supergirl is part of the successful Arrowverse, an ever-growing collection of shows set in the universe established by Arrow that's still going strong despite Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) hanging up his bow in January 2020.
Each week, Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist), also known as Supergirl, takes on a different villain — and in "Ace Report," Doumit got to have some fun as the big bad of the week. The actress starred as Beth Breen, the nefarious CFO of Spheerical Industries who devised a plan to use nanobots to force people to do her bidding. Luckily for the citizens of National City, Supergirl intervened and brought Beth to justice, but not before she claimed at least one casualty along the way.
Doumit's role as the villainous Beth is one of a number of smaller appearances she's made in films and television since her acting career began in 2011. You may have also spotted her on the pilot episode of MTV's Faking It, as "Bar Hottie" on Fox's hit comedy New Girl, in a three-episode stint on Scandal, or in the role of Iris in the Cate Blanchett-led feature Where'd You Go, Bernadette? With her addition to the cast of The Boys, the actress' career is sure to continue to heat up as more people realize what Kripke already knows: Claudia Doumit is a star on the rise.