Jean Smart had never heard of Watchmen before being cast as Agent Blake

If you’re not watching HBO’s Watchmen, then you need to immediately stop what you’re doing and get caught up. The show is heading into its fourth episode this Sunday, and with just three episodes in, I can honestly say Watchmen is absolutely riveting.

Showrunner Damon Lindelof has created the perfect sequel, of sorts, to the original Watchmen graphic novel from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Set 30 years after the original — when millions of people in New York City were killed courtesy of an “alien attack” — HBO’s show movies the action to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the police are embroiled in a conflict with the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremacist group.

In episode 3, “She Was Killed by Space Junk,” FBI agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) comes to town to help the police solve the murder of police chief Judd Crawford. Blake is a grown-up version of a hero from the original comic: Silk Spectre, now much more mature, wise, and wary about this whole masked hero business.

Smart talked to Thrillist about her character’s introduction…and about the big blue dildo she had in that silver case.

“You know, I’m turning the pages in the script they sent to me, and I’m reading, like, ‘Oh, this is so cool, I love this character, this show’s gonna be amazing,’ and I get to that thing and I go, ‘NO! No… am I gonna have to turn this thing down??'” she said, laughing. “I have an eleven-year-old daughter for God’s sakes — not that she’s gonna watch this show.”

"It’s whatever the audience wants to make of that. It doesn’t really figure hugely into the story. I just kept thinking, ‘You know, it’s a good thing my mother passed a couple years ago.’ She was pretty open-minded, but that would have been a bit much."

As the episode implied, Blake previously had a relationship with Dr. Manhattan, a god-like superhero currently living on Mars. He’s completely blue and walks around naked all the time. You can do the math, but it’s probably for the best the show isn’t focusing on it.

Moving on, Smart, who played Melanie Bird in the X-Men-adjacent series Legion, had never heard of Watchmen before being cast in the role. “That didn’t bother me,” she said. “I just felt like what was there on the page was so clear to me. You know? I loved her wise-ass sense of humor. But that always says something about a person, when they deal with every situation like that and keeping the world at arm’s length a little bit.”

"She was obviously very much a loner except for her owl, and has a closet full of just black suits and nothing else… And then, of course, carrying a torch for a guy who’s now superhuman and lives on another planet."

Smart says that Lindelof was worried the show wouldn’t catch on, something he can probably stop fretting over given the glowing reception to the third episode. “Damo I think was ready for some real dissenters, but the response has been so, so incredibly positive, and I think people are really enjoying it.”

“She Was Killed by Space Junk” is framed with a phone call Blake makes to Mars, where Dr. Manhattan is currently living. “Somebody told me that they did something like that in Japan after the terrible tsunami a few years ago,” Smart said. “They set up these places where people could make phone calls to their departed ones that were lost and never found. It’s heartbreaking. I would do that. I would do that in a minute.”

Watchmen. Mark Hill/HBO

Smart also talked about her first day on set. It was the scene where her character meets Tim Blake Nelson’s mirrored-masked Detective Looking Glass. She started calling him “Mirror Guy,” and that nickname — as terrible as it is — stuck. “I still call him that when I send him text messages. ‘Hey, Mirror Guy, what’s going on, I miss you.'”

Blake got the better of Looking Glass in their conversation, but Angela Abar (Regina King) was a harder nut to crack. “It’s fun, too, because every time she thinks she’s got somebody intimidated, a couple of times they come back and cut her off at the knees, like Angela.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 14: (L-R) Dustin Ingram and Jean Smart attend the premiere of HBO’s “Watchmen” at The Cinerama Dome on October 14, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Finally, Smart talked about the chemistry between her character and Agent Dale Petey (Dustin Ingram). Apparently, he’s as big of a Watchmen fanboy as his character. “She’s sooo mean to him, oh my god. Another nice thing about that episode, is that, in terms of her character, it’s so well-rounded. It’s so complete. It’s kind of a nice little package unto itself.”

Watchmen airs Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. EST, only on HBO.

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