‘Watchmen’: Jean Smart Reacts to That Doctor Manhattan-Themed Item in Her Briefcase

“That didn’t thrill me, but it worked out okay,” actress tells EW

Mark Hill/HBO

(Warning: The following story contains spoilers from Sunday’s episode, “She Was Killed by Space Junk”)

“Watchmen” reached back to its comic book roots on Sunday, finally revealing that yes, Jeremy Irons is playing Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias and that Jean Smart is the former Silk Spectre.

Despite her tough-as-nails demeanor, Smart’s Laurie Blake still has quite a thing for her old beau, the blue, God-like Doctor Manhattan, who spent the past 30 years on Mars. Speaking of blue things, Smart shared her reaction with Entertainment Weekly about finding out what was in the briefcase she opened at the beginning of the episode. If you saw “Watchmen” last night, you don’t need us to tell you what it was.

“I did not know until I got to the end of the script. I was so excited, because I’m going, ‘I’m definitely going to say yes to this offer because I really like this script, I really like this character. Oh s—! Oh God…,’” she told EW. “Yeah. That didn’t thrill me, but it worked out okay.”

While it played for a laugh, it also showed how Blake, despite her distaste for masked vigilantes, can’t outrun her past as a costumed hero herself. Blake spends the majority of the episode telling a very long joke — which features references galore to Alan Moore’s original graphic novel — to Doctor Manhattan, via a phone booth that can send calls to Mars (still not cell phones, though).

“It’s just kind of pathetic,” Smart continued. “Here’s this person who likes to think of herself, I think, and acts as if she’s in total control and has every situation figured out and can intimidate anybody she wants, who’s obviously still incredibly vulnerable in a lot of ways. What does that say about a woman? She obviously doesn’t deny herself human interaction when she really wants it, but she still leads a pretty lonely existence. She only has black suits in her closet and a pet owl. That’s kind of sad.”

Read the full interview in EW here.

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