HBO's 'Watchmen' star Jean Smart says the show was 'prophetic' with its portrayal of race relations
HBO's 'Watchmen' was one of the greatest shows of 2019, both in the superhero genre and in general. And now with the Black Lives Matter protests and further debates about racism in the United States, one of the show's most important stars finds the series "prophetic to an alarming degree."
Jean Smart is one of the most beloved actors on the show's ensemble cast list, playing the former superheroine Laurie Blake, previously known by the aliases Silk Spectre and the Comedienne. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Smart spoke about how she felt the opportunity to act in the series was "extremely rewarding."
“This is what actors crave. I mean, yes, sometimes you want to do stuff that’s just fun and just entertainment,” the actress explained. “But there was a quote from an actor a long time ago that said, ‘As an actor, if you want to believe that you can affect people in your audience in a good way, in a positive way, open their eyes to something.’ You also have to accept the fact that you can be a negative influence as well. You have to make your own personal wise choices about the kind of material you do. So you get to do something like 'Watchmen', it’s extremely rewarding. And it was nice that the audience responded the way it did. Of course, we had no idea what was coming. Like I said, it’s prophetic to an alarming degree. We had no idea about the pandemic. We had no idea how race relations were going to come to a head in 2020.”
This does appear to be something HBO has also realized about the show. Similar comments were made by others as well in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the series was made available for free on the HBO website to commemorate Juneteenth.
She also spoke about the psyche of the character. In the show, Laurie is a pretty bitter and jaded person and she's basically still in love with Dr Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), despite leaving him for Dan Dreiberg / Nite-Owl and not seeing him for decades on end.
“That says a lot about her. Then she finds out that he is living here with another woman. She thinks that she’s kind of got it all together, but she’s really kind of a mess,” Smart said. “And she tells Angela [Regina King] that, you know, you don’t strike me as the kind of person who has friends. I’m thinking just look in the mirror! She’s living alone, in an apartment with an owl and has a closet full of black pantsuits and no social life whatsoever. She’s in love with a man who, like you said, she hasn’t seen in 30 years. And another guy who’s in prison. A shrink would have a field day with her.”
You can now stream 'Watchmen' on HBO Max.