The Boys star Erin Moriarty has opened up about how her experience with Graves’ disease affected her performance during the final season of the hit superhero series.
The 32-year-old, who played Annie January and her alter ego Starlight in the Prime Video series, was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition in June 2025.
During a recent appearance on Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s podcast MeSsy, Moriarty revealed that there were “certain components of my character that would have been more pronounced throughout the season had I been able to show up for her,” she said.
“And it's funny, because the one episode where I had started treatment and I was fully present for is the episode that I'm the most in, which is the finale. And thank God I was able to be present at all for this final season. And thank God treatment has worked for me… It doesn't work for everyone.”
She confirmed that dealing with the disease did have an impact on the role she was able to play in the show’s conclusion.
The New York-born actor said that she first got blood work done after she found herself oversleeping and noticed numbness in her hands and feet.
Moriarty added that it took “a really long time” for her to get a diagnosis, during which time “production started to become a little suspicious.”
As a result, she said she “gave production full medical allowance to be directly in touch with my doctors, because it got to a point where I was so ill. I was struggling to make phone calls, articulate myself. Everything sounded nonlinear. I was not cognitively present.”
In the end, the production of the show had to be adapted to fit what Moriarty was capable of.
Earlier this year, Moriarty wrote on Instagram that her condition was so severe that she began to lose “the ability to walk.”
“The numbness in my feet led to a lot of falling,” she continued. “The night before we shot my segment of this episode, I fell and shredded up my knee.”
Graves’ disease is a form of hyperthyroidism. It is caused when the body’s immune system produces antibodies that disrupt the thyroid gland causing it to make excessive thyroid hormones.
According to the National Health Service in the U.K., symptoms may include a fast heart rate or palpitations, tremors, diarrhea, difficulty sleeping, weight loss, irregular periods and feeling hot, hungry or anxious.
“This isn’t a pity post,” Moriarty added in her social media post. “It’s mostly to say: f*** autoimmune disease. F*** it so hard. F*** the ignorance surrounding it, too. I can’t remedy that ignorance but not being outspoken about it occasionally feels wrong.”
