'Watchmen' Star Regina King on Bringing "A Wonderful Story of Legacy" to Life
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October 21, 2019 There are major spoilers about the first episode and the novel so be careful if you don't want to get spoiled.
Damon Lindelof (who she worked with in The Leftovers) sent her the script directly, her agents didn't get the chance to read it, it was specifically for her, the script came with an envelope that read : "Don't open until you get to this page. Don't cheat!", inside the envelope she found out an artist rendering of Sister Night, her character's alter ego.
"I had never seen anyone like her," King says "The idea I would get the opportunity to bring her to life was huge. Because she's not in the source material, I didn't have to feel any of that pressure. I've been wanting to play a superhero all my life [...] I have the opportunity to design her, along with the creator, to make her into who we think she should be."
But that wasn't the moment when she decided to play the part because at that point she already had made her mind:
"I still have the letter he wrote to me - this most amazing letter," she says, "I'm paraphrasing, but it said, 'This is what I'm working on, and I can't see this without anyone other than you.' I was like, 'I don't need to read the script. Just tell me what day we start.'"
She portrays Angela Abar, alias Sister Night, she is a police officer who has a secret identity so she can protect her loved ones. In the Watchmen universe, Tulsa police officers were targeted and assassinated by a white supremacist group called the Seventh Kalvary (this was inspired by the Tulsa race massacre, where on May 31, 1921, a white mob set fire to hundreds of black-owned businesses and homes, killing at least 300 people and leaving more than 10000 people homeless), using masks modeled after legendary Watchmen antihero Rorschach.
"Angela and Sister Night are the perfect representation of human beings," she tells. "We have to put on masks to protect ourselves through all different aspects of our life. [...] When we first meet her , the woman we're meeting at her son's school is not the Angela she really, truly is. The Angela who is the closest to the essence of Angela is when she's with [her husband] Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). We as humans usually have that, that one safe space, where you really know it's not the representative; it's the real person. That's what rang for me when I read the pilot. How do we tell that story? It's all on the page. It's just me making sure it's coming from an honest place."
In the pilot, Angela looks in horror when she discovers the body of her friend and colleague Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) hanged, it was a shocking scene and made Angela question if she was going to die next
"I was not familiar with the source material, so I didn't really know what to do with it," she says about the pilot's shocking final scene. "I was like, 'This didn't really happen, right? We're going to find out that he's still here, aren't we?' Because there's this wonderful relationship between Judd and Angela. Why are they so close? Why do they have this banter? Why do I love it so much? Why do I want to see more of them together? And just when you're feeling that, it's taken away."
There are more mysteries and enigmatic characters like Will Reeves (Louis Gosset Jr) , a man who survived the 1921 Tulsa race Massacre , he is showed at the start of the pilot in a harrowing and heartbreaking fashion. Regina King says the relationship between her character and Reeves will "open up your heart and break it at the same time."
"There's a wonderful story of legacy that's about to unfold," she teases. "Legacy is one of those words you hear all the time in comic books, and it plays here as well."
King also talks about how she expects comic book fans to receive the new series. "The graphic novel has informed how Damon has written his whole career. If anyone's honoring the work, it's him: 'How am I going to take something perfect and make it better? You can't mess with perfection, but what I can do is pay homage to it and capture the feeling of it.'"
In this story Rorschach is still dead but his face is the image of a white supremacist group, the papers say Adrian Veidt is also dead but that doesn't seem to be the actual case, doctor Manhattan is still on mars according to news reports but we are not sure about the veracity of those sources, Nite Owl isn't shown but police officers pilot owlships, the old guard is present, not directly but it's there, but it's the new guard and specifically Sister Night who now watches over Watchmen.
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What did you think about the show, ONTD?
I hope this is better mods