Jean Smart Joins Damon Lindelof’s ‘Watchmen’ Series
‘Legion’ star Jean Smart is adding another comic book adaptation to her resume as she joins HBO’s ‘Watchmen‘ series from Damon Lindelof it has been announced.
Based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel, the series is set in an alternate reality where superheroes exist but are treated like outlaws. The drama will not be a direct adaptation of the comic books, but a “remixed” version. According to Lindelof, the new show will use the original book as it’s “Old Testament”, but create a new, more contemporary story. The comic book “was specific to the Eighties of Reagan and Thatcher and Gorbachev,” he commented. “Ours needs to resonate with the frequency of Trump and May and Putin and the horse that he rides around on, shirtless. And speaking of Horsemen, The End of the World is off the table… which means the heroes and villains – as if the two are distinguishable – are playing for different stakes entirely.”
Plot and character details are rather thin at the moment, but we do know Jean Smart will be taking on the role of an FBI Agent investigating a murder. There is unconfirmed speculation that her name is Agent Blake… If true, that would indicate a connection to Edward Blake, aka The Comedian, whose murder is the catalyst for the original graphic novel. Possibly a daughter?
Along with starring in ‘Legion’, Jean Smart has a huge list of tv, film and theatre credits including ‘Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce’, ‘Fargo’, ‘Hawaii Five-0’, ‘Garden State’, ‘I Heart Huckabees’, and ‘Frasier’. She also starred as Martha Logan in ’24’, and provided voices to animated series ‘Kim Possible’.
Smart joins the already announced cast of ‘Watchmen’, which includes Tom Mison (‘Sleepy Hollow’), Jeremy Irons (‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’), Regina King (‘The Leftovers’), Don Johnson (‘Miami Vice’), Tim Blake Nelson (‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’), Louis Gossett Jr. (‘Hap and Leonard’, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’), Adelaide Clemens (‘Rectify’) Frances Fisher (‘Masters of Sex’), Jacob Ming-Trent (‘SuperFly’) and Andrew Howard (‘Hell on Wheels’).
In addition to this, /Film is saying they have confirmed Jeremy Irons will be playing an older version of Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, who was a very key character in the original book. This is possibly where you’re seeing some of that “remixing” Lindelof mentioned come in.
We know from on-set photos of newspaper headlines that Ozymandias is supposedly dead in the series, so it’s possible Irons will be playing the role in flashbacks. It’s also interesting to note, *Spoilers for the comic book incoming…* in the graphic novel, Ozymandias is responsible for the death of The Comedian. So you potentially have the daughter of The Comedian investigating the murder of the man who killed her father, and that is the catalyst for this story arc. We should also point out, The Comedian does have a daughter in the book, which is Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre, and he did work for the FBI. Could it be she has taken her father’s name and is now following in his footsteps? If correct, that does have a nice symmetry to it, although, this is all speculation at this point.
As ‘Watchmen‘ is a HBO series, it falls under Sky’s overall deal with the US network, so it should come to Sky Atlantic in 2019.
