Smart feels HBO show ‘was a gift as an actor’
Jean Smart, a veteran of “Designing Women,” “24” and “Fargo” among many other projects, has most recently added HBO’s “Watchmen” to her list of credits.
The limited series, created by Damon Lindelof and based on a graphic novel, is set in an alternate history where masked vigilantes go after criminals decades after the actual Tulsa race massacre in 1921.
Smart plays Laurie Blake, a reformed vigilante turned no-nonsense FBI agent who has some internal conflicts of her own. “You’ve got to see so much of her public and totally private moments. It really was a gift as an actor,” Smart says of the series.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How much did you know about the story and the real-world massacre of Black citizens in Tulsa?
I knew nothing about that. It was shocking to me, shocking that I had never heard of it. And my father was a history teacher. It’s astonishing to think how prophetic the show was in a way, because first with the coronavirus and the idea that something happened that gave the entire world a common enemy and that that would help bring peace if we had something big to fight together. But then it was set against a historical event of unbelievable brutality against the Black community. It’s just incredible that Damon wrote that right before all of this
happened, right before.
What was your crash course into the world of “Watchmen”?
I went out for martinis with one of the writers, and she gave me a lot of information about Laura’s background, her family and her relationships, because I knew nothing about it. “Watchmen” wasn’t something that my son had been into when he was growing up. I always feel like research is good. Just to a point, I mean, it was actually very valuable to know about her parents and her personal relationships. But research only goes so far. You have to base it really on the script.
How is it to be part of art that takes on subject matter like this head-on?
Oh, it’s great. This is what actors crave. I mean, yes, sometimes you want to do stuff that’s just fun and just entertainment. 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 the race relations were going to come to a head in 2020.
Your “Watchmen” character’s pining for somebody who’s been living on another planet for 30 years. How do you find the truth in that?
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 . ... A shrink would have a field day with her.