With Game Of Thrones about to wrap up for good with Season 8, HBO is forging ahead with several exciting new major TV series – including a new take on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel Watchmen. The series is masterminded by Damon Lindelof, and has been in production for a 10-episode series with a cast including Coen brothers favourite Tim Blake Nelson. The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs star dropped by this week’s Empire Podcast – and confirmed the character he’ll be playing in the show.
“My character's name is Looking Glass, and it's a really interesting, intriguing character,” Nelson told Empire. “I don't really completely understand him, and that's intentional. Damon Lindelof metes out facts about your character as you go along […] so I'm learning as I go along who this guy is, and trying to... It's almost like fresco painting. The clay is always wet.”
Looking Glass is a new character who, as far as is known, hasn’t appeared in any Watchmen comics. According to reported casting call information – and feel free to skip ahead a paragraph if you want to stick to what’s officially been announced – the character description is as follows: “A good looking cop, the native Oklahoman isn't simple as his rural accent makes him appear to be. A top interrogator and behavioral scientist, he may also be a bit of a sociopath.”
While Alan Moore has been famously outspoken about his displeasure at the way his many influential comic book projects have been adapted for the screen, Nelson says he reckons the Watchmen creator will ‘appreciate’ Lindelof’s twist on the material. “Damon Lindelof […] is doing something that I think Alan Moore actually will appreciate, which is that he's treating the Watchmen novel as a history book, and he's imagining the world created by the Watchmen now,” he explained. “And he's using that as a prism through which to examine a lot of issues currently on the surface of American culture and politics.”
In May, Lindelof released a lengthy statement confirming his intentions for the show to ‘remix’ the comics rather than shoot a straight adaptation. According to SlashFilm, the series will also star Jeremy Irons as an older incarnation of classic character Ozymandias, years on from the original Watchmen comic story.
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