The Watch - Damon Lindelof on the World-building of ‘Watchmen’ | The Watch

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

‘Watchmen’ showrunner Damon Lindelof joins the show to talk about why he doesn’t want to be called a creator, but rather a “remixer” (2:55), how he chose which part of the comic book series to reimagine (24:17), and the pilot-making process (48:59). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Damon Lindelof Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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coupon on your next Zycam purchase. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio Tunnel of Love is his favorite song now.

It's Andy Greenwald. It's a Springsteen version. Yeah, I do love that version. I love that whole album. What's up, man? Today's a special episode of The Watch because we are going to be joined by Damon Lindeloff, the creator and writer of HBO's watching.

Not creator. No, I got into trouble for that. Remixer. Yeah, host of the pleasure cruise that is Watchman. Yeah. Last night, an incredible episode, God walks into A-Bar, and we got to learn a lot about Dr. Manhattan, obviously.

Really fascinating conversation with Damon about the process of putting this show together and also grappling with the response to it, I think. Yeah, it's amazing. and always really, I mean, I always feel really excited and privileged to talk to Damon about this stuff because he is so present in at every moment, like, not unlike Dr. Manhattan, living in every possible timeline of the creation of this project and is very much, it's still very much alive in him. There is no, like, callous built up over what he's tried to do, what he's succeeded at doing, what he feels he has not succeeded at doing with it. But, you know, I think you and I both feel the same way that even though we can nitpick, and maybe we will a little bit when the finale airs, next week, this show has been a triumph. Unlike anything I've seen on television, really in a lot of ways. And we talked about last week about how it feels very much of a piece of Damon's work on TV,

but it also feels like very much as a response to his work. And it's also a response to the responses to his work in some ways as Damon goes into in this interview. So thank you so much to Damon for stopping by and being so generous with his time. It's going to be the entire episode of The Watch. So if you haven't seen Watchman or last. night's watchmen specifically do so before you listen because we spoil. And if you haven't seen the most recent episode of the Mandalorian, then you're like me. And you can look forward to maybe all of us watching it.

I mean, I didn't expect Baby Yoda to be Darth Vader. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'm right here. We'll talk about it Thursday. Yes. Here's our interview with Damon Landlough. We'll talk about Mandalorian Thursday. Take care, guys. So should I welcome him or should I just begin talking or should we just do this? We should just do this. The internet's number one unofficial Watchman podcast. I made that joke already.

Has one up, but not on the mic. You said I could do the intro. We are joined by the... I guess are you the creator of watchmen? You're not. You are the adapter? Oh, my God. Did you read his Instagram?

Get me struck by lightning. I remember there was a letter. It was a couple of pages long. Damon Lindelof, welcome back to the watch. It's always a wonderful treat to be here. Sitting betwixt you. Yes, we decided to make Damon maximum discomfort. Yeah.

He's sitting in between us. We got the Greenwald five-minute delay. That's good. Yeah, but Chris got me a coffee. Did he get you a coffee too? I got my own coffee. Wow. I do.

There is a slightly canted bottle of water here that I suspect was opened and filled with something from the tap. But it's the thought that counts. Change so much. Welcome back, Damon. We're so excited to talk to you. We've been having an incredible time talking about Watchmen this year. It is a pleasure to be here. I'd love to pretend that I don't listen, but you know that I do.

Which is why I wanted to begin by saying thank you especially for coming. on even though I disgraced all of us last week by not knowing Cal's last name was Apar. What? Is that something that you should, that everyone should know? Apparently it was. I was dragged for it. Were you really? Yes.

Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Because I, I mean. Excalibar stuff? Yeah, because I should have known that you would have given him the same last name in the service of a good pun. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I can never resist a good pun. That's for sure. If no other reason. We are going to obviously want to talk to you about the scope of the the season, a lot of the thoughts that went into it. But I guess I just wanted to start with last night's episode, because we're recording this after episode eight, God walks into A-bar. Yes, nice pronunciation. Yes, thank you. I'm not going to mess up again. And this was, for lack of a better term,

the Dr. Manhattan episode. And for a show that has taken such, dare I say, delight, at least delight on the screen in remixing, reimagining, reinventing the mythology of Watchman, And I wanted to know at what point did you know, or was it from the beginning, that Dr. Manhattan had to play an on-screen role in your show? I think it was from the jump. I mean, memory works in a very strange and subjective way, especially as it relates to when ideas come and when they don't come. And I think that the formative ideas for this season of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan was not in lockstep with those ideas. Right. But then very shortly after that, I sat down with Jeff Jensen, who was the co-writer of last night's episode, and he was one of the first people that I reached out to when I decided to start sort of exploring this idea when it was sort of like, okay, if I were to do it, what would I do?

And here are the ideas that are most exciting to me. We literally made a list in a little blue notebook that I have that are like the adjectives and things that we use and to describe what Watchman is to us, the O, the O, the O, the O, the, the O, the Old Testament, the original text. Some people call it the graphic novel. Some people call it the original 12 issues. We just referred to it as the Old Testament. And number three, number three or number four was non-linear storytelling slash playing with time literally and figuratively. And then in parentheses, Dr. Manhattan exclamation point.

Did the notebooks start glowing at that point? At that point, it started glowing. And I drew a picture of a penis. Those are the two things. The high and the low. Yeah. But this whole idea of what is this new watchman's conversation with the old watchman? And this, for lack of a better word, kind of paradox pickle of not, I didn't want to make a sequel and had to sort of convince myself that I wasn't making a sequel.

But realizing as we started talking about the show that, of course, it's a sequel, by any definition of it's following 30 years later the events of the original. And so by definition, it's a sequel, but I wanted it to be more than. And so, but one of the things that I think makes something a sequel is it's the continuing adventure of those characters. Yeah. So if you're doing Empire Strikes Back, it's like, here are the further adventures of Luke and Leia and Han and Vader. And if you're doing Ghostbusters 2, it's like, here. are the, you know, here's more Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis, but the idea of doing Watchmen and saying, okay, this is not the continuing adventures

of Dr. Manhattan and Adrian Veit and Laura Gisbezik, but it also is. Sure. The idea started forming, we were going to do a backdoor sequel. You know, there's this phrase in television writing called the backdoor pilot. We've all seen backdoor pilots that both worked and didn't work. There's that really weird episode of the Brady bunch where, you know, there's this phrase in where like you just kind of go off into this other family who've adopted like a white kid and an Asian kid and a black kid and like Bobby and Cindy are like in one scene of it and you're like what?

Wasn't that the HBO show here and now? It might have been. It might have been. They just call that like the expanded universe now. The more recent one that I think people might know is there was a failed backdoor pilot for the office. Oh. There was an episode called The Farm where it was going to be the Dwight spin-off.

And was Mike sure going to be in it as most? He would never have allowed that to happen. Thomas Middletch was on it. And they ended up airing that whatever it ended up, whatever it was supposed to be as an episode of The Office. That's amazing. And they never made the show. So, you know, I want to see that show now.

Anyway, the idea of, by time you get to the end of these nine episodes, you sort of realize like, oh, okay, like the trio of characters that I was most interested in, and this is no slight against Dan Dryberg or Night Owl is just sort of like, he was not going to be a big part of, if any part of, of this season of television. I can, I can, that's a spoiler about the finale because I don't want people to get their hopes up. Right. He doesn't come flying in? No, no.

Dryberg back. No, but for these three. It was all about Dryberg. Come on. Like, is there a way to do Watchmen without having Dr. Manhattan in it? Right. You know, like, I kept trying to imagine myself as I'm watching the show and someone else made it. and I had nothing to do with it.

What would my expectations be and what would I be disappointed if it wasn't there? And so the idea of like, Dr. Manhattan is just sort of off on Mars and is on the TVs in the background for the entire season. I would get to the finale and be like, oh, man, you know, like, he said at the end of the original watchman that he was going to go off and create life. Like, what happened there? Like, how did that turn out for him? I feel, I really, you know, I'm really, it's a perfect ending, right? This is, I never felt reading those original 12 issues that it needed more. Sure.

But I kind of felt like that was a question that required some degree of analysis. Well, you also got to have, in some ways, the best of both worlds because I think one of the amazing things about the Old Testament, if you will, is that it's people playing dress up and then there is a superhero and he is a god and what would happen? Right. What would he be? The idea you just mentioned of him looming, almost like an uninterested, uncaring God. You got to play with that. When you said that, I was like, I pictured him literally at a little. spinning.

He's just there at a wheel making... You know, the Rumble Stiltskin IP is available. Cable knit sweaters for days. That's not the kind of looming you may. Although I'm into it. You got to play with that for a number of episodes before bringing him down to Earth

or revealing that he was there all along. So it's one of the things that I kind of like about the show. Maybe this is a way to pivot to a larger conversation about it, which is that you get to kind of have all of it at the same time, which I think the degree of difficulty of that is probably enormous. But you got to play with this idea of what if there was someone who was superpowered, but he wasn't interested in being here, and people were sending video messages to him and praying to him. But then secretly, oh, what if...

It's almost like what Joan Osborne said. I was waiting for you to make this joke for like 10 days. I know, it took me a second. Yeah. You're not going to say it. It should have been a stranger on the bus. Do you really think that many people know who Joan Osborne is? Do you want to all sing it together?

Yeah. Kaya, do you know who Joan Osborne is? No. Yeah, there you go. Okay. She sang a great song co-written by one of the guys from the Hooters. Oh, yes. That's right. Yeah. What if God was one of us? Oh, my God.

Yeah. I was really struck. Want to talk Hooters? Is that, are they adjacent to Hooty and the Blofish? No, they're way predate. They're one of the iconic Philadelphia bands. They're like one of like five Philadelphia bands. So when Hootie and the Blowfish were kind of kicking around names before they settled on Hootie and the Blowfish, do you think they were like, oh, people are going to, we're going to have to be next to the Hooters and all the.

We're like a Hooters cover band maybe. Right. Right. Well, only one of them was Hootie in the movie. rest with the blowfish. All right. Right. So,

okay. This tangent is. Anyway. Marvelous. Yeah. So the idea that the idea that the sequel was kind of hiding in plain sight. And by the way, hiding in plain sight was another thing on that list.

Yeah. Because as in, and again, we're going to be spoiling things from the original watchman, if you have no familiarity with it, which is that it did so brilliantly, the character of Roorshack had been hiding, you know,

had been sort of there in our faces all along. So I think that that idea of, you know, the audience, even in a puzzle box show, are going to be trying to solve for all these mysteries, but is there a way to put kind of Dr. Manhattan front and center without them realizing how front and center he's been? That just felt like an enormously exciting challenge. And even if it didn't work, it was worth trying. And we didn't just do it for the sake of it's going to be a cool gimmick. We needed to make it integral to the show. And more importantly, I think the idea was that,

that Angela Abar, who is a new character, she exists in conversation with the original watchman for all sorts of reasons. She's connected to it. But the idea that she was more, she's moving through this entire show and she's seemingly like behind it. She's like, she says what the fuck a lot.

A lot, yeah. You know, in terms of like, and those are things, she's not pretending. She legitimately doesn't know who Loub Man is or why her car is being lifted off into the sky. And I felt like one way of mitigating her what-the-fuckedness was that she was actually ahead of the audience on one major, major thing.

And not just ahead of the audience, but ahead of Dr. Manhattan himself. Even he doesn't know who he is to give Angela that level of power and knowledge that she gets to wake him up when she's ready to. Although she knew 10 years, right? She probably was aware that the 10-year clock was coming to an end. And she's aware that there's something tragic about it.

Right. So she was avoiding doing it perhaps for that reason. Yeah, or maybe she thought, Like, as so many of us living in a state of denial or we forget, like, but in her quiet moments of meditation, starts to kind of realize probably as soon as Crawford dies. Right. That, oh, this is probably what Cal was talking about. Just one, sorry to, I'm dominating.

That's okay. Chris said I could start, and then he's not, and I'm never going to finish. I did have just a question from a structural point of view. The thing you mentioned was so interesting to me last week, where a character who nominally served as our point of view character because like her many of us, even those of us who have read the original text, could have been behind the story. What that does to the audience dynamic with the character when suddenly she's been in on part of it the whole time. And I know that's something you must have thought about and your writers must have considered how to best position her

so that we don't lose that connection that we need with our main character. Right. And so the feeling was that that connection may temporarily be lost when we turn that card over, right, at the end the seventh episode, but I'm all, I love losing things and then getting them back. Because that's, isn't there an old saying about that? If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, that's a Joan Osborne song. Kaya, do you know who's saying that song? No, I think that, yes, we definitely considered that idea and realized that it was sort of inevitable. And then episode eight didn't become an apology for, but it again recast Angela back in the

audience position. Because when, when this guy sits down across the table from her claiming to be Dr. Manhattan, she is the audience. And so hopefully by the end of episode eight, you are now reconnected with Angela. Because that's the way the connections work. I wish that attachments and romantic entanglements basically worked on a consistent level where it's sort of like, we've been married for 40 years and we've been in love with each other every minute of that time. I find that the more romantic approach to life is my wife and I are approaching our 15th

wedding anniversary. And I don't think we've ever been out of love with one of the. another, at least I've never been out of love with her. Do you want to bring her out? There's she. Come on in. But there are moments where it dips down and then when it, when it fires back up again, you suddenly realize, whoa, like, that's how disconnected I was.

But now it's become even more profound. And so this corny idea of people giving wedding toast when I was in my 20s saying, I'm now more in love with, you know, the bride or groom's father or mother saying, I'm now more in love with my spouse now than I was when I was. I first married them, I would just kind of roll my eyes and be like they want to kill each other. But in fact, now as I am a 46-year-old man, I'm like, shit, I think there's something to that. I noticed after I watched last night's episode, I went back and read the sort of memo manifesto that you didn't sort of introduce before the show came out.

I've always wanted to have a manifesto attributed to me. Nobody wants to say I penned a manifesto. It's like, it was like cool for like three days in like 19. It was like, hey, man, manifestos are in. And then it got real dark. They don't usually end well. I did just drop like a letter, you know, a version of it to the FBI in an unmarked envelope. That's right.

Just so they could get my hard take on Watchmen. It is really striking. Sometimes there are actual full sentences that feel like they are in the certain characters' mouths in last night's episode from that letter. the idea of risk as sort of like the motivating factor for both life and art kind of comes up. There's a lot of time hopping that goes on in that letter that comes up in this episode. I thought that there was remarkably resonant. So I was wondering if you maybe looked at eight as kind of a mission statement unto itself in a lot of ways for this series. Because it is a conversation between the new and the old.

Yeah. I mean, it's built that way. And that issue of Watchmen, which it's called Watchmaker. and it's one of the greatest pieces of writing, not just in comics, but I think in general. And I, you know, like, I've been living in the shadow of that comic book ever since I read it. And I think any version of trying to do that, you know,

the first person narrative of here I am, you know, in 2019, and here I am in 1973, and here I am. So I wanted to do that in the letter that I wrote to the fans as a way of, I don't know, what's the fan equivalent of virtue signaling? where it's, you know, someone's got to kind of coin that phrase. Like, here's my sincere, like, effort that I'm making. Nerd, nerd to signaling.

There should be something. It is, it is that, you know, and it's this weirdly, like, it's genuine, but there's also a level of abasement to it when, like, you know, actors that Martin Scorsese would call cinematic, like, trekked, trek to Hall H. Right. And say, I've always loved comic books, you know. But there's, you know, there is, we can do an entire, have an entire conversation about how fan service became a bad thing.

Or when is fan service good versus when is fan service bad? It's like we all can't get enough of baby Yoda, but it's the greatest piece of fan service in the history of fan service. And that's good fan service. So it's all arbitrary to some degree. But for me, it was like, I need to send a love letter to that issue of Dr. Manhattan. And for me, it's sort of, is there a way to explain both visually

and in terms of storytelling, how Dr. Manhattan experiences the world, not just in terms of narrative storytelling, but emotionally. And could you, for a guy who basically, what's really interesting about him is he fell in love twice in the original Watchman with he was already in love with Janie at the time that he became Dr. Manhattan, and then he fell in love with a 16-year-old Lori,

and then broke up with her. But this idea of why start a relationship with someone when you know that relationship is inevitably going to end, felt like this great sort of a narrative device. And so I was drawn into wanting to do that. And that basically meant that Dr. Manhattan had to be in love with the main character of this iteration of Watchman. And then all that stuff fell into place.

I mean, Jeff Jensen, who, for those of you guys who are listening to this don't know, started as working at Entertainment Weekly. And he wrote these recaps and deep analysis and theorized about Lost. And that's how I became familiar with his writing. And then post-lost, he and I started collaborating first on Tomorrowland and now on Watchman. But of all the human beings that I've met and talked to, his love for Watchman, you know, dwarfs my own. And so if I was like, if I can convince Jeff that this is worthwhile, then maybe it's worth doing. And then he just seemed like the perfect partner to write a Dr. Manhattan episode with because he feels the same way about that issue,

as I do. And hopefully it feels more like a love letter than it does an echo or a recap. Like, you know, all of these things are, we're now in a generation of fan service where those of us who grew up loving Star Wars and Star Trek and Ghostbusters are now basically writing fanfic, you know, and it's, people are giving us tens of millions of dollars to produce it. But, but you don't want, fanfic, again, is both like a wonderful thing and sort of like a derivative thing. And, how do you skate between being derivative and also acknowledging the thing that inspired you in the first place? Yeah, I mean, you could actually, you could look at Adrian's prison heaven as kind of a good metaphor

for that, right? Like, you get what you want, you get to play in the playground that you always dreamed of playing in when you were a kid and like, what if I could, you're sitting there playing with Star Wars figures and you're thinking like, what they really should do is have a bounty hunter show. It's like, yeah, and suddenly your G.I. Joe figures are showing up. and fighting with your Star Wars figures. Yeah, right.

It's so funny that you say action figures, though, because, you know, that we talked about that a lot when we were writing Weight Story, which is that's the way that he views all the Phillips and Crookshanks. Yeah. And so I would destroy my action figures. Like, I was actually quite abusive with him. I was more of a Sid than an Andy.

Yeah, right. Not you. I mean, I'll take it. I'm nothing like you. That's a toy story reference. But I think that that idea, and that's Rod certainly one over. one, right? Which is that, you know, the first, it's, it's all you want is a little bit of quiet

time to read your books. And then the world ends and you have all the books in the world and your glasses break. Right. Like, so it's the, it, twilight zone is be careful what you wish for and you should, and you should be punished for wishing for it in the first place. Yeah, of course. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by the Real Real Own iconic luxury items at unreal values with the real real, the leading reseller of authenticated luxury consignment from top designers. Shop from designers like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Rolex, Cardi, and hundreds more at up to 90% off retail. The Real Reel Reel employs over 100 brand authenticators, gemologists, horologists, and art curators who inspect thousands of items

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The idea of the watchmaker episode and this idea of being able to take something apart and see how it works and admire the pieces, there's a large aspect of that in this work. And one of the things that I'm most excited about episode to episode is seeing which gears you were interested enough in to take out and hold up to the light and see how they worked and showcase. And for example, the idea of an omnipotent being like Dr. Manhattan having a weakness, but the weakness isn't kryptonite. love. That's the original story. That's there in the original one. And it's so good and it's so clean and so perfect, just like a lot of Alan Moore's ideas tend to be. It made total sense to want to take that out and show it off and showcase it, right, in a way that my memory of, and maybe a lot of other people of our generation who read Watchman, I never read it. I didn't read it when it was being published, but a few years later in the collected form. I just think of it as this totemic text,

and I've never considered these pieces before and how crucial they were to my understanding of storytelling or of comic book or whatever other version of writing you want to consider it to be. So maybe even going back to that notebook, like the Dr. Manhattan story, what were the other pieces that you felt were particularly exciting to disassemble and examine? Well, I think the idea of heroism in general, you know, that theme of what makes somebody want to pursue justice versus. is it just being this, I'm putting my, you know, my close fists on my hips with my cape flapping in the background, that it was driven by something that was much more personal and,

uh, and traumatic. Um, uh, that was a big part of it. I think that the, you know, the, the, the, the, the analysis of, of a political reality. People say that people have been kind of riffing on and doing watchmen over and over again since the mid 80s, but that, the, the, political space in terms of comic books. You'll see something like the authority come along, you know, that that takes a shot at it. But it still feels like it's this kind of sacred space that nobody wants to go at. And so, you know, Tana Hassee Coates, who I've mentioned a billion times, as being one of the inspirations for this season of Watchman, his writing, particularly the case for reparations in

the Atlantic. But he also, as a comic book writer, did a run on Black Panther, which was those things, too. And so, you know, setting these characters in a world that has political realities and cultural realities and societal realities, that was obviously a huge part of it. And then I just, I think that the idea of surprises, that's one of the reasons that I still love watching television. And I know that there are a lot of downsides in Heron and Puzzle Box, mystery box, whatever it is, we want to call it, these sort of like weekly shows, but in the binge watch, all those things go away. So the idea of being, of really being surprised, you only plays now in a binge show for me where it's like, I'm, okay, I'm just going to watch Stranger Things over the course of the next two or three days and avoid, you know,

all social media and culture writing in case there is something surprising that happens in the finale or else the culture is going to tell me that something surprising is going to happen. But when I read the original watchman, when they, they pulled that mask off of Rorschach, and he was that red-headed dude with the end-as-nigh sign, or when it is revealed that Vite killed the comedian. I was, it took my breath away. Like, even though my father and I had spent hours and hours and hours

trying to kind of solve these mysteries, it was like, whoa. And I'm sort of like, can you still do that? Like in 2019, now that it's sort of like, by the end of episode two, the minute that, you know, the minute that somebody mentions that Cal had an accident, is it possible that anyone will be surprised

that he's Dr. Manhattan? Right. Can it still be, you know, can it still be done? Yeah. Can you do it fairly? You know, like, those things really, really drove me to do this. And to insanity. The thing you mentioned that I do want to circle back to

was this idea of cracking open these, the action figure boxes on Steve Carell's wall and 40-year-old Virgin, which is basically a useful metaphor for a lot of the beloved franchises and IP, for lack of a better word, of our time, the ability to crack it open and play with it and update it and consider what it would mean to do it today and bring the politics back into it and bring the risk back into it. That's something that on this podcast we talk a lot about and how hard it is, you know, trying to be empathetic and sympathetic for the, the, challenges of doing that in the marketplace and fan service and what do people want and what do people want to do with these things. I know that you're close with the people who are some of the people like with JJ who are working on Star Wars, so you don't need to speak directly to the challenges of pushing and pulling within that sacred cow. But we've been marveling on this podcast that you managed to do it and you manage to somehow

sneak under the radar or whatever and take something that existed fixed in people's minds and is beloved for any number of reasons and shake it up. And that seems harder and harder to do, even though many, many people, us included, like to bemoan the fact that we wish more people did. Well, I really appreciate you saying that. I do feel like there's a, that's not, obviously, that's not an empirical truth, right? Like there are many people, I'm sure, out there saying, you never should have done this. And not just on general principle, but they watch it and they go, this is an aberration for

any number of reasons and that was going to that was going to come with the territory but um i i do feel like um there is nothing wrong with taking these myths to their next iteration and we have to acknowledge that there's a reason that you know the marvel movies or the star wars franchise or a live action remake of aladdin have the broad appeal that they do which are you know that our conversation with nostalgia. And so this idea of like, is there anything new to say about nostalgia? I don't want to drag nostalgia because I love it. I consume it. But there's there's this other thing there too that we can also talk about. And that's a more interesting conversation, which is how can you subvert? You mentioned JJ. And one of the origin stories that I've written for JJ Abrams,

although he and I have not ever personally had this conversation because I didn't know him yet when this happened. Should we bring him in? He's with your wife outside. He's with my wife. Yeah, of course, is that JJ wrote a draft of Superman, a new Superman movie that he was going to do at Warner Brothers before, I can't remember exactly what the climate was, but it was long before Nolan's Batman movies. And Wolfgang Peterson was going to do like Batman versus Superman. This was after the Burton, you know, the Burton iteration of Batman, where I'm sort of like, you know, I guess Schumacher was making them. Batman was hibernating.

And so, and DC and Warner Brothers were sort of like, we're going to make, and JJ wrote this superbook. Wasn't there also like a George Miller Justice League that was floating around? Yes. Yeah. That may have been later. Yeah. Anyway, this draft that JJ wrote leaked and it got published on any cool news, which again, I don't want to drag any cool news, but I think still exists. But it's like at the time, Ainit Cool News was the geek website.

And sort of, and it got dragged so. hard. The script. The movie never got made. Was this the Nicholas Cage movie? No. This was a totally different one. No, no. This was, and in it, in it, one of the, one of the shifts that JJ made was that Krypton didn't blow up. Right. It still existed. And in fact, Lex Luthor was Kryptonian. Whoa. And right. And so, but people, A, probably didn't even read the entire script. They just heard that. Or the idea that he was trying that was so heretical. And this leak was enough to kill the project. And in my opinion,

I was sort of, when I heard that he had done those things, I was like, wow. Like that was my take, how would you pull that off? I want to see that. Yeah. What I don't want to see is the 5, millionth version of Jarrell and, um, and Laura putting young Calell. And I don't want to see that again, you know, do, you know, do something. Take a risk. Like, even if it results in complete and utter disaster, you know, change something up. Like, there's got to be, you know, a different way to do these stories. And finding what pieces are the canon, are the immovable objects.

And, you know, see Spider-Verse and tell me that Peter Parker is the only Spider-Man after you see that movie. Right. No. Like, Miles is now legitimately Spider-Man to me just as much as. any Peter Parker ever will be. And so, and his backstory for becoming Spider-Man doesn't involve Uncle Ben. In fact, his uncle was a bad guy. Right.

So you realize, oh, wow, they're really, and a lot of that credit goes to Ben Disfer. And of course, Lord Miller, who are geniuses, but it's like, you realize you can actually play with these stories a lot more. As long as a radio act of spider is involved, we're good, you know? Like, it turns out what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man isn't. that isn't the thing that we think that makes him Spider-Man. And you have to experiment. And when you experiment,

there's a zillion failures before you have any kind of level of success. And sometimes you look over at the mold and you say, like, penicillin? Like, a two penicillin? But what did you take, though, in your mind now, looking back, because you've made the show, it's well-received. I know you're not going to comment on this, but the traders are saying,

Oh, it's a ratings hit. The trades. Damon and I like to read the trades. The trades are out there. The trades are out there with JJ and my wife right now. Would you like to come in? It's a hit. Come on, everybody.

Say, he's got an old press hat on. How hard a lift was it to say to the gatekeepers, and I don't mean to create a dynamic where the people who control the properties for DC are necessarily conservative or don't want to try new things. But how big of a lift was it to say, this? is what I want to do with this, if you trust me with it. Through my lens, you know, from my perspective, the most intensive gatekeepers were in the writer's room. Myself, not just myself, but I'd say half the writer's room was Watchman literate, and the

other half was coming to Watchmen as newbies, more or less. Maybe they had seen Zach's movie or read the graphic novel once they got the job, but I hired like four or five people who are like, yeah, that sounds like a really interesting story you want to tell, but I have no affinity for the original watchman. They started to fall in love with it once we got into the process, but they were newbies. And so there wasn't anybody at DC, and certainly nobody over at HBO who was like, Roershack would never do that. Tread lightly, bro. Right. So it was a very interesting piece of IP in that sense in that kind of nobody really knew what to do with it.

And yet it's held in this completely and totally, you know, degree of reverence. And so when I first went over to HBO to pitch, hey, the cornerstone of this season of Watchmen is about race. And this character, Hooded Justice, who was a black man who had to pass as white in order to not be murdered because he was living in the 1930s in New York. Most of the people at HBO were like, cool, tell me who Hooded Justice is. And I realized like, okay, so the show has to do that work. The show has to tell you who Hitted Justice is. And then there were a couple people in that room, namely one HBO executive who was very littered in Watchman, who was basically like, how can you do that with Hooded Justice?

Because there's that panel where he's white, whereas eyes are white. And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to solve for you too. But we had already had those conversations in the writer's room, and I was prepared. We had answers at that point. But ultimately, the short answer is, and this is going to sound hyperbolic and untrue or false modesty or Empress has no closed him. Talk to anyone who was anywhere near me while I was making this show.

And at this moment right now, with one episode still to air, I still feel very much this way, which is, I'm not sure we got it. You know? I'm not sure we got it. But you have been saying that consistently. I think perhaps the fact that I really believe that

is why maybe it may work in the end. Because the minute, it's not that I don't have respect for people who say, got it, But, like, once you say got it, you stop. Right. And you have to keep reaching. But for you, what is getting it mean? Means like, oh, I made a version of Watchman that was worthy of the name Watchman.

That gets to be called Watchman. Right. Like, there's no, you know, the ultimate success story for this show, the ultimate bar to clear would be that Alan Moore emerges from his cave. Should we get him? He's outside. He's also outside. Right. Oh my God. One last guest. And basically watches these nine episodes and says, I was wrong to ever, ever, ever feel like nothing that I wrote could be adapted into anything worthwhile. Right. That's never going to happen. And so the Allen Moore surrogate becomes the fandom itself, right? I want people who have no familiarity with Watchmen to fall in love with Watchmen. If we can sell the original 12 issues, as a result of people watching this show,

that would be, that's a huge win. But the people who I wrote that letter to, the fans of Watchmen, they're the ones whose validation probably means disproportionately more than people who are just coming to it clean because they feel protective of it. Sure.

And so for someone who says, who started from a place of the very idea that you are making more watchmen offends me, for that person to have migrated to, I liked these nine episodes. But I have to say, I had quibbles with them, but I liked them. That feels like it is the answer to your question.

But I think you did, you accomplished something much different and possibly much more significant than that, which is that I think that anecdotally from watching people's responses to this show, you have created a whole new generation of people who never saw themselves on Watchmen. And fans out of people who are like,

I'm interested in Angela. I'm interested in Cal. I'm interested in Will. Or I'm interested in what superhero stories can do now. Yeah. Because this is different. Right. It is.

I mean, I think it's pretty significant. Because reading the responses to the show, I was like, you don't see the show itself is playing around with so much freedom in its sort of constraints of being in this Watchman universe. But I feel like the way the people are reacting to it is different than the way people are like, hey, solid job. You deserve the banner of Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. I mean, it's like creating something new. Hearing you say that makes my eyes burn, I don't, you know, I don't know entirely how to respond to that other than to say thanks. And yes, that was a big part of it. And another part of it was acknowledging at every turn, this was not my story to tell on two levels.

Not my story to tell because it's Watchman, not my. story to tell because it's about the pain inflicted on people of color. It's a century show in the last century, but obviously centuries before that and constantly, you know, feeling the weight of this not being my story to tell and waking up every morning and still telling the story, not in defiance, but out of whatever that insane thing that inspires us as storytellers to say, I must do this thing. There isn't any nobility in that. It was a requirement as much as it is for me to eat or sleep. Like, when I have an idea, I can't shake it loose until I put it out there into the world.

And this was that idea. And so I think that the fact that the show has become that, and again, this is not me saying anything other than the way that the process. It's a testament to the collaboration. No, yeah. What was happening inside that writer's room? What was happening behind the camera, the conversations that were happening with the actors? because it wasn't, I'm the one who's talking to you guys right now, but Watchman isn't mine. Like, I got to be part of this family that was taking care of it for a while.

But, you know, all of the things that you said, I'm proud to be a part of it, but in many ways they were in spite of me. I want to talk specifically about that collaboration and also your approach to this story, because I think that one thing that's been a hallmark of you talking about it and just now is extremely, you've been extremely humble about it. And there's a lot of humility, and this is not my story to tell. And I will reach out to collaborators, and I will be challenged with my own biases and my own beliefs in what I want to put forward into this story, into this adaptation. From my experience this year, the one thing that I've learned also is that to make a TV show, it's incredibly hard. And it is 100,000 percent of collaboration.

And that is always humbling every step of the way and inspiring and exhilarating. But also, someone has to be steering the ship and someone has to be making decisions or else you potentially will end up with mush. Right. With your experience making the shows that you've made and doing the projects that you've created and worked on, how did you strike the balance this time? Because I do think that one of the things that is most striking about this show is the level of, as Chris was saying, the level of representation, the way that is being

received by communities that are not our communities, who's on the screen, how it's being portrayed, how did you find that balance, knowing that the buck had to stop somewhere in terms of what got on the screen and what didn't, and the type of show you wanted to make. But whether it was a day one in the room, whether it was day 15, whether it was every day, how did you strike that balance? It was the latter. It was every day because you never strike a balance. This idea of like kind of, if we imagine ourselves walking along a massive teeter totter or seesaw, whatever you, whatever you call it. It's regional. Yeah, but this idea that you find the middle of the seesaw and you're kind of like, I got this, that just never ever happened on Watchman. It was always sort of like you just walk a little bit too far to this side and just before it tips, you run very quickly over the other side. You're also falling off the teeter totter constantly. And hopefully you haven't alienated people to the degree where they won't help you get back on it. And I did sort of feel like that spirit of we were all in it together, but it was less like I'm Lance Armstrong and Team USA.

post office has to draft for me so I can get to the end. It's a very loaded comparison anyway. Right. And I was so juiced up on Sarah. Your have looked great, by the way. Oh, my God. I don't think necks are supposed to look like that, but that's okay.

But I think that the idea that, look, going into this, I was sort of like, I want to put together a group of voices that are people who are very different than I am, not just in terms of the way that they look and the experiences that they've had in life, but also what their relationship was with the, to watchmen, et cetera. So the word diversity sends chills up our spine probably in a bad way, because it's, you know, diversity and inclusion have become this kind of buzzwords of PC culture, but at the same time, they're absolutely and totally required for a show that is dealing with this kind of subject matter. And I think that my attitude coming in was like, I'm going to build

this Benetton room. And I was literally thinking in those terms, and that'll be great to get all those voices, but I'm still going to, it's still going to be a benevolent dictatorship, you know, and it wasn't that. I was suddenly like, oh, I have to do the job differently than I've ever done it before, different than it was on loss, different than it was on the leftovers. I said I was going to listen, but I didn't really want to listen. I wanted to sit there for two minutes while you were talking and then tell you, that's cool, we're doing it my way. This time, I really had to listen.

So what was the hardest thing you had to hear? I what happens in the writer's room it has to be it has to be sacred like can you talk lots of things is the short answer maybe just more structurally and objectively because you know I'm

I take an enormous interest in this before I had writers room and especially now you have done things in a unique way I mean I tell me if any of this is wrong but I remember we've talked about this before in my understanding of your shows there is no writer's room unless you're there

right you don't walk out and let other people run it for a day at a time or two or, right? Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, you're called, a phone call or whatever. Right, right, yeah. This room ran for quite a long time.

You had a lot of runway, and then it was still running when you were in production. Is that correct? Yeah, there were different iterations, right? So iteration number one of the writer's room was about like 12 weeks before the pilot was even written for us to just figure out what the season was going to be and what part of that season was going to be in the pilot so that I could go off and write the pilot. and there was a lot of world building and decisions made in that 12 week period,

then wrote the pilot, went off, shot the pilot, edited the pilot, and then version number two of the writer's room came together, which is we're now going to break episodes two through at the time, 10. And then that writer's room went on for close to 10 months to a year, and some of those writers overlapped from version one, and we lost some of them to other shows, like Core Jefferson, for example.

He went, but he did an entire time, season of the good place in the space of us, you know, doing this season of Watchmen. And also, I think, consulted on succession, you know, simultaneously. And Carly Ray was finishing up on Westworld, and then she came in to Watchman around the time that we were breaking episodes four and five, I guess. And, and then we lost Lila and Carly before we were able to, like, break, episodes eight and nine. So it was a little bit more like a sports team where people are getting injured and traded. Yeah. And then like by time we kind of got to the end, it was just like three or four of us. It was like all hands on deck to just a lot of the finale had been figured out in

advance, but we still had to break it. So there was a lot of like fluidity there that was both exhilarating and terrifying. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Bose A.R. Bose AR is a first of its kind platform that is an audio-first approach to augmented reality. Bose-A-R-enabled products have motion sensors embedded inside that can detect your head orientation and body movement while you wear them. AR-enhanced apps can then use this information to offer you tailored audio content. Disney and Bose are working together to bring fans a new immersive audio experience

based on the beloved Star Wars movies, available in the Star Wars official app and exclusively for Bose-A-R-enabled devices, fans can journey through an immersive 360-degree audio-augmented reality timeline of Ray's lightsaber with spatialized sound for unique, gesture-driven interaction, where the user can freeze the scene, move towards elements, hear new content, and experience the story from new angles. This thing is sick. I tried it out. I've been using it. You can basically step into these iconic Star Wars scenes like Luke training on the Millennium Falcon with Obi-Wan, and you can hear it in a way that you've never heard it before.

If you move your head, you know, it makes it sound like the training droid is like in a different part. You can hear Han. You can hear Obi-Wan. It's just amazing. To celebrate this partnership, Bose will also be releasing a limited edition Star Wars QC35 headphones 2. Visit Bose.com slash the watch to learn more. What was, because, again, we had talked about this before, but you chose to do, there's a world in which potentially, I don't know, I don't want to, I don't want to speak to how HBO. it does their business, but there may have been a world where they said straight to series, this is great.

I believe you've said that you like the pilot process. Love it. So coming back from breaking, writing, shooting, and editing that pilot, where was your head? What were the things that you were gratified to know you may have been right about? And what were the things that you were like, oh, we have to give this a major rethink into series? I think it was mostly tonal stuff. You know, there were pieces of the pilot that were that were definitely. definitely working.

And then there were pieces that weren't, and those were all issues of tone. And then the other part of it, I think, was how are we going to do exposition on this show? You know, I'm a big fan in my storytelling of just kind of, like, dropping people on their heads into the world. It's like, if you watch, like,

the first 10 minutes of inception and you're like, what's the fuck is happening here? And I'm like, I love it. You know, I don't care. The movie's going to explain it to me at some point. It isn't until like Ellen Page and Leo are farting around and he's giving her his tutorial that you're sort of like, oh, okay, that's what was going on. And I still don't entirely have any context for how this guy was an old man and there's a spinning. But I just love it.

And to me, I believe that the audience will, you know, the most common thing that I heard as it related to Watchmen all the way. And again, I'm not on social media, but I'm on Instagram. and so my comments on Instagram and also just percolating up to me is I don't know what the hell is going on but it's kind of being offered as a but I'm still watching the show. That's a good thing.

People are uncomfortable with this. But I do think that the original iteration of the pilot may have, that's a balance too because there is a point where it becomes so confusing and perplexing that people just can't emotionally engage.

They're like, I feel like I'm supposed to know what's going on and I don't. And then they become resentful of that expectation that they're not meeting. And I've been on both sides of that thing. And I think that we were constantly trying to adjust the balance so that the show was both inviting but unclear at the same time. This show seemed to also be a new way for you to make TV.

Like when I watch these episodes, they all have their own sort of tonal signature. There's a lot of like week to week you're not sure what you're going to get every week. And you're like, oh, this is going to be a Lori episode. So it's told in a certain way that has Lori's sensibility. It has an almost, you know, big sleep kind of Raymond Chandler feel to it as she's going through it. Was there a concerted effort to kind of keep the process of making television interesting for you on this? Like in a way that you wanted to make it feel drastically different from leftovers and lost? Not consciously.

I mean, I think that the idea is always like, can I just make a really cool episode of television? television somehow and when should I get out of my own way and when should I listen to my collaborators. I do think that while I love the idea of a Carrie Fuganaka season of True Detective or a hero Marai season of Atlanta, I'm much more accustomed to really, really strong directing producers who have oversight overproduction in the case of Lost. It was Jack Bender. On the leftovers, it was Mimi Leader. on Watchman, it was Nicole Cassell,

but then giving episodic directors a lot of space to bring their own thing to the show and do the same thing with actors. And so I don't like to go to set. I mean, I like to visit the people who are working on the show and are killing themselves, but there's nothing for me to do on the set. That's the way that I look at it as my job is done.

Now it's someone else's job. And then I get it back in the edit. And so I think that this idea of I have to acknowledge that what I put down on the page, it's not going to turn out exactly the way that it was in my head. And that's really healthy. And then I get it back. And then I get to shape this new thing. And now it's not necessarily mine anymore.

It's ours. And that process. So it's like we didn't write the episode. We didn't, Lila and I didn't write episode three and then like high five and be like, this is going to be an amazing episode of television. You know, Gene Smart, who didn't really have a lot of watchman literacy when she came in, we cast her like eight or nine days before she was going to have to be in every single scene of that episode. And so we started to see Dailies and we were like, huh, this is going to work. Like, she's, you know, this is cool.

But how's the audience going to feel about switching perspectives after two episodes of Angela and now suddenly we're with an OG watchman. Like, we just didn't know. And so that feeling of, again, we're on thin ice. They could break any time, but at the same time, we're expected to do a triple lutz. Is that an ice skating thing? Yeah. You nailed it. There's a sow cow and a lutz.

They're both figure skating. They're both welcome on this podcast. But I think that that idea of once you start to get, I start to get uncomfortable once I start to get comfortable. I don't, you may have heard this when we were talking about this last week, but I just, I wanted to get your thoughts. on it, even though it's a thought about you, which was that now that we have, you know, that you have a body of work of these, particularly of these three television shows. Obviously, you've worked on movies and worked on TV shows previously. But to go from lost to leftovers to watchmen, there is something that is, these are all

collaborations. You worked with people on all of them, and I do not mean to diminish their contributions in any way. But there's something, who created that Lindelovian adjective? I feel like Seppenwell's been using that a lot recently, or Emily Nussbaum has. I, to even admit that I know that it exists is the ultimate. It can never confirm or denied. Let me just say, the first time that I saw it, it felt incredibly weird to me.

Sure. And then I was basically like, oh, I say sork and ask all the time. But for, but. Yours is exciting because the F becomes a V and that feels a little bit. It does. It feels, I don't know. It has like a Russian literature kind of. Apatovian is the other one.

Oh, yeah. I like doing that. We can talk about that next. Yes. But just this idea that, To watch these three shows and watch them as they've been coming out, as I and many other people have, there are things that you fixate on, that haunt your work, that concern you, whether it's issues of time and loss and memory. And also this very, I think for the audience, tangible wrestling with story itself, how best to communicate it.

How many corners can I paint myself into? Thinking about it as one long work is very strange for television. That's not usually medium that's allowed itself to do that, but it's starting to appear. I think now that we have more author-driven work, we have a body of it. And for those of us on this side of the microphone at this moment, it's especially fun to do with your work. I'm wondering if you have any, and you certainly don't need it because you're still making work, but do you have any self-reflection on that idea? Do you look back on your work and do you see yourself revisiting the same knots and trying to undo them? I think the heart wants what the heart wants.

And so the stuff that turns me on is always going to be the stuff that turns me on. It's not like later in life I'm suddenly discovering. oh, you know, I really love Russian literature. It's always been like a bit over my head. So the things that I loved in Watchman, of course, are going to be the things that I wanted to write about once I was given the opportunity to write about stuff. And now the idea that I get to return to the source, but I kind of have to take what I learned. I'm ready to kind of take on Watchman right now and not just do a straight up adaptation and write something that I think feels like Watchman because there was this thing in Watchman that was really speaking. to me. And so there's something about non-linearity and storytelling that when I first saw Pulp Fiction,

I was like, this is for me. That is, when you think something is for you, it's narcissism writ large. It's like, you know, Quentin Tarantino is like, who the fuck are you? Like, but it is that thing that we all go for as writers where it's like you really connect with someone by scratching at the surface of this thing that you felt. And being able to create that sensation in others is, you know, is not necessarily why I do this, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I really care intensely about what people think. I'm just not, there are writers out there who are not just curmudgins saying, I really don't give a shit what people think. I'm just putting my stuff out there. That's a real thing. I'm just not wired that way. And so how can I not let my desire to please others get in the way of me,

you know, making my stuff is what I'm wrestling with. And then I try to make the work reflect all that. but, you know, it's a very surreal thing to be at a point in my career where I'm having to have perspective on my career. Yeah, yeah. Do you look at, I mean, do you look at this show specifically, but the other two as well, as like the concepts behind them as a coping mechanism to deal with issues that you maybe wouldn't be comfortable taking on head on, right? Like, essentially, like, you know, watchman, I think to me is a lens through which to view history, even though you guys have come up with an alternate history of present day for the most part. The way in which you guys head on look at the 20th century is very powerful to me. And in a lot of the ways, even though leftovers had a high concept, it was essentially a universal idea of grief and loss and mourning and how do we do that.

And what is faith in the face of that? And obviously, loss had a lot of those same themes. I mean, when you're approaching these things, does it feel comfortable to look at those really heavy topics through sometimes, like you said, like a puzzle box show or a lens like that? It doesn't feel comfortable, but it feels like it's the only way to do it. You know, I mean, I think that, at least for me, I think the idea of saying, let's take very specifically the idea of the massacre in Tulsa in 1921, which is when I first read about it, which was in Coates's essay, in the Atlantic, it was just a couple of sentences or maybe even a paragraph in the case of reparations about this thing that happened. And I'd never heard of it before. And so this idea of like that a lot of people are saying, I never knew that that was real. That's the, I know what you mean because I felt that

four years ago. And so, but something in that paragraph like punched me in the stomach. And instead of litigating, what is that? Let me explore it. I was like, I'm interested in this. I'm going to go deeper. And so I looked it up on Wikipedia. And then I wanted to go deeper. And then I bought a book and I read the book. It's called The Burning. And at the end of the book, I felt that thing where it's sort of like, how do I tell this story? Well, the answer wasn't, Damon Lindeloff is going to do a biopic. You know, and by the way, in my Google search, it's like Morgan Freeman is developing some, you know, there are, there are, are black filmmakers who are already, who have already acknowledged the Tulsa 21 is a story that should be told. And so I'm sort of like,

there's no way that I, that I am qualified to tell the story. So, should I, I just produce it or should I use my weight to make a biopic about this thing or whatever. I don't know. And then that was happening in one section of my brain. And in the other section of my brain, I was getting a phone call from my agents at the time. And Warner Brothers and HBO saying, hey, they literally said, you can do anything you want with Watchmen. Like, you know, to put that in like 80s, sexual, like, porkies, you know, you can do anything with my sister. Like, I know, like, and it's sort of like, oh, hey, maybe I could use watchmen to tell the story of this race massacre in 1921.

And people would sort of have to, they, they would have to watch it because they were interested in watchmen. They don't get to opt out and say, I'm not interested in watching, seeing that movie. Like, we were talking about Chernobyl when I first got here. It's like, you have to get through that membrane of, I don't think I want to watch anything about Chernobyl. You have to be compelled to watch it, in this case, by. everyone telling you how great it is. But I kind of go like, it wasn't about watering it down.

We had to show Tulsa 21 exactly the way that it happened without taking any creative license on any of the larger story points. Of course, we made it the origin story of Hooded Justice. That is not a thing that happened in the history. And thus superheroism in general in this world. Right. Yes.

So it became the alpha and the Omega all at once. It became the most important. I think that people watched that pilot and were like, this better you better be doing this for a good reason. I was like, I can't speak to whether or not it's a good reason, but I can say it is as essential as any scene

in this season is going to be. It is, without it, the season wouldn't work. And for a scene that's about the pain and trauma that is inflicted on Will Reeves, and by association, people of color, writ large,

we have to start it here. That was the approach. There's that incredible moment in last night's episode where Angela's sort of saying to Doc and John and Cal how she blames him for

her grandparents' death or for her parents' death. And the first time I watched, I actually watched the episode twice last night. The first time through I was like, oh, she says, she's doing this in kind of like this flat affect. Then you realize that sort of her understanding in some way of why

that guy did what he did, you know, because that they are all part of this you know, these people who have been stepped on throughout the century, I was like, oh, this is just an amazing callback to this first episode and you completely understand why Angela is in that moment.

It's like, I don't blame this guy necessarily for what happened. I blame you, you know? Right. That's, you know, I think that when we talked about the thermodynamic miracle, which has been name checked a couple of times in this version of Watchman,

but is originally hatched by that issue in the original Watchman, and a thermodynamic miracle is basically offered as an explanation for love and the creation of life. It's actually, you know, I'm not going to quote directly from it, but if you believe that it's possible

to take a sexual assault and turn it into something that another character calls a miracle, that's what it is. And it's thusly, highly problematic, but also sort of fascinating. And so we started talking about what were other third,

thermodynamic miracles, which is just another, thermodynamic miracle is just another way. It's a Dickensian construct of everything's connected. It's that same idea that I, you know, that... You should do a show about that. Yeah, I should. Like, where all these people like crash land on an island, but like somehow they were all connected.

That's like three seasons. But I think like that's obviously, you know, that's an idea that I'm fascinated with, that we're fascinated with as a culture, like that myth is fascinated with where it's suddenly that moment of revelation where, oh, my God, my dad is Zeus. Oh, my God.

Like, you know, I've been living underneath your stairwell for the first 12 years of my life, and I'm actually the Messiah. My parents were the most important. They were murdered by the most dangerous wizard in the history of wizards. What? Is that a thing? You know what? I'm going to go sell that show.

I think that's the thing I've not, yeah. It's now the time that I should announce that I'm doing the Harry Potter TV show with just a, but it's a meta-commentary on. on the ills of society. I'm curious what national disgrace black hole, like have you found recently read about that you're going to graft of the Harry Potter extended universe?

It would be too much of an epic spoiler to even reveal. You've been very generous with your time, but there are a couple like speed-roundy things I did want to ask. And you talked about Gene Smart coming on with a relative level of knowledge of the material. Curious, in your role as showrunner, often what you have to do is you have to woo these people

to take a chance on you and take a chance on this part and take a chance on this material. Are you going to start singing an Abba song right now? I am. Yeah. Well, I'm actually going to sing a Joan Osborne song. Yes.

Kai, have you heard of Abba? Yes. Specifically, Jeremy Irons, who appears to be having a great time. I'm curious, was it you will sit naked and eat birthday cake in the first episode? Yeah, we didn't even tell Jeremy Irons that he was in watching.

That's what I was wondering. No, that's a joke. Is there, like, did you say, like, the greatest hits, like, you will, epically let one rip in a courtroom while pigs run past you, or was it more the type of storytelling and the opportunity that excited him? We sent him the entire pilot and a breakdown of what Vite's scenes would be subsequently because that was the first thing that we were going to shoot them in Wales.

And then, like, we constructed a sort of, here's everything you need to know about Adrian Vite. We don't expect you to go and read the graphic novel, but here's who he is and here's what he did, and here's what he looks like and et cetera, et cetera. And then we had a Tom Spiesiali and I took him out for a long coffee and essentially pitched him the story of what happens to the smartest man in the world once he has achieved his master work. It didn't quite work out the way that he hoped it would. And he's sort of at a loss as to what his encore is going to be.

And Jeremy just completely and totally like dove in on that. I didn't know that his fundamental approach to the character was going to be comedic until I started watching what he was doing in the pilot. And then that inspired some of the more. It was sort of like, we can write against this or we can lean into it. But I think that the idea of like, first off, we have to be true to these characters, but we also have to acknowledge that we're seeing them 30 years later. And so I don't want to see, you know, Lori Blake 30 years after watch me.

and she hasn't changed or shifted at all. Like, what's a different version of her? And for Vite, it was sort of like, not only is he quietly losing his mind, but I think that this idea of embracing this guy who says, I'm not some Republic serial villain after having dropped a giant alien squid

in the middle of New York and killing three million people and having no real fundamental self-awareness of the fact that's exactly what he is. Like, there's a degree of, like, a complete lack of self-awareness and narcissists. He's like, where's my credit?

And, you know, and delightfulness that was inherent in that character, that we couldn't really take him seriously. And so we put him in the most absurd situation imaginable. But then I feel like, then last night he's in this conversation with Dr. Manhattan, and he's saying, I'm miserable. And that's when Jeremy Irons, like the Jeremy Irons that we all know and love, he's there too. Like, that broke my heart when I saw those days. I had same question about Lewis Gossett. Yeah. in terms of what?

Did you tell him about the pigs running across the courtroom? No. I'm just wondering again, like, to bring an actor. We just talked about enemy mine for like four hours. There it is. Like, I'm just being honest with you. He was like, all right, he's like,

all right, they're ready for me. And I was like, wait, say Darwich again. You know, like, that's all I'm asking for. But I just love when you see actors who, you know, not speaking at all to their financial circumstances, but like they don't need to prove their legacy as actors and you get them to come play in this world,

which can be risky for an actor, you know, to come back in and trust people they haven't worked with before and take on a role. And particularly for this role of will slash hood of justice, it is an incredibly complex and heavy role. And it's so wonderful to see him in it. Right. One of the things that I learned over the years is don't burden the actor with anything more than they need to know. Right. And so my default position is to tell them almost nothing. And then if they come and they ask me questions, I answer those questions. But they'll tell you what they need to know.

Right. And with one exception this season, as it related to Cal, after we shot the pilot, I was like, I need to tell Regina. And I debated as to whether or not I should tell Yaya because Cal doesn't know that he's Dr. Manhattan. But then I was like, but Yaya probably does need to know because his performance, he still is John Osterman, even though he's unaware of it. Right, because he would be like, my wife's in danger. Wouldn't I be really upset about this? Correct. Yeah, right.

And so after we had shot. like two episodes. I told ya, yeah, yeah. And apparently he said he had to go get a trainer. Right. That's what he said in the interviews. And then I'm looking at him in that interview going like, you have to get a trainer? Like, then I look down at my own body.

It's like, will you be my trainer? I sobbed for two hours. And then, uh, by the way, thank you for arriving at this interview dressed as Dr. Manhattan. Oh, my pleasure. Well, I assume that was a requirement. I don't want to take up too much. It was awkward getting onto the lot.

I do have a speed. a speed-round question, which is, did Jeremy Irons get his sport coat from last night's episode from Don Johnson's Miami Vice wardrobe? Oh, my God. Yeah, Don just rolled down the sleeves. Not to my knowledge. Okay, that was my... It's a good question.

We obviously will continue to speak about the show. We're one week from the finale. How are you? That's the only other question, because so much of your, the interviews you gave and, you know, text messages that we had prior to, to the show debuting, you were anxious about this. And this was obviously not an easy journey in a lot of ways, whether it was creatively or in terms of the production, whatever. How are you feeling right now about this? I'm feeling simultaneously relieved and terrified. Like, the relief is new, right? I wasn't feeling any of that before. The first waves of relief came just as I started watching

the cuts of the show and being like, oh, okay, like, I kind of like this. I don't know what anyone else is going to think, but we're not going to completely and totally embarrass ourselves, but that didn't start coming until late. But the terror is, and again, let's not go down the old familiar roads, but we live in a culture that only cares about the final 40 seconds of the fourth quarter. And it just doesn't matter if your team was undefeated getting to those 40 seconds. Where's the ring? If you miss the field goal, you know. And literally, I don't have to be on Twitter to to know that people are saying, as long as he sticks the landing, if he sticks the landing, he probably won't stick the landing.

I've been like that, and that there will be some debate once the finale airs as to whether or not the landing was even stuck. That's a subjective thing. Like that idea of, I've been, you know, I'm just not in a place emotionally where I don't give a shit anymore. It's sort of like all of the nice things that I'm feeling right now will be completely and totally erased if people don't like the finale. And it is a finale.

Like, it feels like a finale to me. And that it's a finale. Can I just say I hope that people listening and watching the show take a page from Dr. Manhattan's book exist in multiple timelines at once and know that I think the triumph of the show is that it is 100% a journey, not a destination show. It has been so exhilarating and thought-provoking and exciting and fun. Yeah. It doesn't matter.

You know, I mean, it matters and clearly matters to you. And people will debate it and that's part of the journey. But at the same time that the credits are rolling next week, episode six is also playing. Episode one is also playing. All of it exists at once, and I don't think you can separate it out. What the show did, like, I watch it with someone who doesn't know anything about Watchmen and is grip by it every week. You know what I mean? He watches with Gene Smart.

I watch with Lou Gossi Jr. every week. No, I watch it with somebody who doesn't know anything about Watchmen. I know people who were Watchmen agnostic who have become super fans of the show. So it's quite an accomplishment. and the episodes leading up to the finale, at least. You have nothing, but you should be proud. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you for being here.

Unfortunately, we're out of time. Heidi, Alan, JJ. We'll get to you next week. It's always a pleasure. Congratulations on the show, and thank you for taking time to talk to us about it. Thanks for having you, guys. Thanks for having you, guys.

Thanks for a big fan. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the L Word Generation Q. Oh, hey, you're still listening. Shout out to a post roll. So what are you doing tonight? No plans? Perfect. Watch the premiere of the L Word, Generation Q.

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