Confirmed: Jean Smart plays Silk Spectre in HBO’s Watchmen show

HBO’s Watchmen show, a “remix” of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel (Moore is not on board, naturally) premieres this October. The show is set years after the conclusion of that work, which means that characters who survived the original can come back. For a while, all we knew was that Jeremy Irons would be playing an aged-up version of Ozymandias, the mastermind behind the fiendish plot in Moore’s story. Then, Dr. Manhatten — the big blue radioactive man himself — turned up at the end of the official trailer:

Another familiar character turned up with less fanfare: around 1:32, a woman named Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) introduces herself as an FBI agent. Speaking at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, creator Damon Lindelof (the guy behind LOST) confirmed that this character is indeed Laurie Juspeczyk, aka the Silk Spectre, older and wiser and in law enforcement.

In the original Watchmen, Laurie took up the mantle of Silk Spectre from her mother — for them, superheroism was a family business, although Laurie resented being forced into the role. She was romantically involved with Dr. Manhatten, but the challenges of being in a relationship with an impossible being unbound by space and time proved insurmountable, and she ended up with the more earth-bound Daniel Dreiberg (aka Nite Owl) in the end. (We’re not sure if Nite Owl is in the show, by the way, although you can see his ship in the sky in the trailer.)

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It’s interesting that, in the new show, Laurie is going by the name “Blake” rather than “Juspeczyk.” Laurie’s actual father is William Blake, aka the Comedian, although she was raised to think that Laurence Schexnayder, her mother’s agent, was her father. Sounds complicated, to say the least.

HOLLYWOOD, CA – SEPTEMBER 13: Jean Smart attends the premiere of Amazon Studios’ ‘Life Itself’ at ArcLight Cinerama Dome on September 13, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jean Baptiste Lacroix/Getty Images)

Silk Spectre was played by Malin Åkerman in Zach Snyder’s 2009 take on Watchmen. It’ll be interesting to see what Smart, a charismatic actor with a long list of credits — of late you may have seen her on Fargo or Legion — can bring to the role.

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