Watchmen Chapter 1: New Animated Adaptation Interview

Warner Bros. has just released Watchmen: Chapter 1, the first half of a new animated adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ groundbreaking superhero murder mystery. In honor of its VOD premiere, io9 sat down with director Brandon Vietti, as well as actors Katee Sackhoff and Titus Welliver, who voice brand-new takes on Silk Spectre/Laurie Juspeczyk and Rorschach/Walter Kovacs.

As this was a rare opportunity, we couldn’t resist asking a few additional questions about their previous work, including The Mandalorian, The X-Files, and Scooby-Doo! Wrestlemania Mystery. First up is director Vietti, who was keen to discuss adapting the first half of the 12-issue limited series into a deft, 80-minute feature.

Gordon Jackson, io9: You’ve been with Warner Brothers Animation for a long time, right?

Brandon Vietti: Twenty years.

io9: Twenty years, and you’ve worked on many different incarnations of Batman—The Brave and the Bold, Under the Red Hood, Batman vs Dracula, the Scooby-Doo/Wrestlemania crossover… 

Vietti: I did.

io9: …and now you’re on Watchmen. How do you feel about that?

Vietti: It was intimidating. But also tremendous joy, because I respect the material so much. I was a fan of the book. The complexity of the storytelling, the characters, the world-building—it’s unmatched. And while it was a daunting task to kind of step into all of that world-building, amazing craftsmanship, and the prestige that comes along with it, it was also fun for me. I love that kind of puzzle-solving involved in trying to adapt. It works so well on the printed page, so to bring it into the filmmaking medium—but specifically to the animated medium—to really capture all of the strengths of animation, the unique voice of animation in adapting this material. It was just a lot of fun for me and my entire group.

io9: Going into this, was there something you knew you wanted to do differently than the Zack Snyder movie? Had you at any point said to yourself, “This hasn’t been done before. I really want to adapt this the way I see it”?

Vietti: I try not to waste too much on Zack’s amazing movie or the amazing motion comic that came before us. Those are great adaptations, and with any adaptation, any artist that comes in to adapt great material is going to bring a different voice to it. I didn’t want to disrespect any of the artists that came before me by straight-up copying, but my goal, our task that we set for ourselves, was to focus on the original comic and do the best we could in adapting this to animation. To answer your question, though, I think for me, the most fun is the sequence with Dr. Manhattan on Mars.

io9: Oh, really?

Vietti: Absolutely. I think I had a lot of ideas for how to sort of mix some of that material, using editing, using transitions, using sound design, to hopefully allow the audience to experience what Dr. Manhattan experiences in perceiving multiple points of time simultaneously. That’s something that I think a comic book would have difficultly portraying. A film can do it very well. I think animation can do it best. So to me, that was the biggest creative push in trying to find a way to sell to the audience, “What it’s like to be Dr. Manhattan?” How do you get in his head and perceive multiple points of time? And that was an example of embracing the strengths of animation in our storyline.

io9: Did you feel intimidated by Dr. Manhattan? The character’s been meme’d so much, in recent years. He’s been parodied a lot. You didn’t feel like there was anything that you had to navigate around…

Vietti: I wanted to really make this come through. I mean, hopefully what we did does come through.

io9: It does. But the image of him sitting on the rock on Mars—there’s a popular meme surrounding that. Were you warned against putting that image in there?

Vietti: I gotta say, it never crossed my mind that the fact that it’s been meme’d a lot. Again, my entire focus was capturing the spirit of the original book.

io9: The script by J. Michael Straczynski is so tight, yet he didn’t add or remove a single word. Did you feel the text itself was absolutely sacrosanct?

Vietti: Yeah, but there’s a lot of work that he did. He really was the key to unlocking how to translate … I keep saying … 12 books into a movie format. It’s difficult. The pacing that you do for an individual issue of 12 issues is different than what you would do for a movie. So with all of his vast experience in TV and film, he was able to go in there and find a better way for us, for the filmmaking media. Sort of reorganize some scenes. Make very difficult cuts. We didn’t want to cut anything. We have so much screen time. We had to make some hard choices for editing, organization material, cutting material. And he was really the key in helping unlock the best way to format the movie for two chapters.

io9: The integration of the Black Freighter narrative was very clever.

Vietti: Yeah, I remember one of our first meetings he was super energized about Black Freighter. The Freighter, as Alan Moore wrote it, always had these interesting poetic resonances with what was going on outside of the comic and the characters. And Straczynski really had a bunch of other ideas too within our new format because of the challenges of the adaptation. And I sort of integrate that stuff in a slightly different way, but it still feels like it was done in the book. And of course that really gave me a great filmmaking opportunity to- again, I think works best in animation—cutting back and forth between the events, the visual of a comic book panel, the visual of an animated frame. Personally, I felt was something that would work better, be more successful, and doing the same trick with live action as a contrast of visual.

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After we spoke to Vietti, Katee Sackhoff was generous enough to discuss her performance as the Silk Spectre—among other things.

io9: So, Watchmen: How excited were you to join this?

Katee Sackhoff: Oh my gosh. You know, every time I sort of get asked to do a voiceover animation, I look at the content. I look at if it’s something that I’m intrigued to see. And when I saw Watchmen come across my desk, I was like, oh, yeah, no, I have to do this. I have to do this. This is super cool.

io9: When it comes to voice acting, you’ve already been Poison Ivy, She-Hulk, Black Cat, and Robot Chicken‘s Bitch Pudding. Your performance in this felt legitimately anguished. 

Sackhoff: Thank you. I think Laurie—I identified with a lot of the things that she feels. I felt her pain and I felt what it’s like to love somebody with all of your heart and not feel enough. I know what those things feel like. And I wanted the audience to hear it in her. Because I find her to be so strong, but incredibly vulnerable. And, you know, when you see when she’s not getting what she needs, that her heart breaks. So, yeah.

io9: Did you record all of your lines by yourself, or did you get to be in the same room as Titus Welliver and everybody?

Sackhoff: I didn’t, sadly. You know, Titus and I have had the pleasure of working together once in person on Mandalorian. And then we’ve done quite a bit of voiceover jobs together at this point but we’ve never recorded together. So I think that’s next for us. We’re going to have to at some point get in a room. But wouldn’t that have been awesome? Every time I do a voiceover job, I always think to myself, “God, wouldn’t this have been awesome to be able to coordinate all these people and get in a room together?” But it never seems to happen.

io9: So, speaking of Mandalorian, as Bo-Katan, you have that famous image of yourself sitting on the throne. How difficult was that to pose and how much thought went into it? Was there a lot of maneuvering? Were they like, “Katee, could you shift here?” Or did you just nail it in one go? 

Sackhoff: Live-action is a lot more challenging than voiceover. And there are times where I wish that Bo was still in voiceover. Holding that position was incredibly difficult and painful and not natural. But I think it looked absolutely cool on camera. So it was the right choice. But it was definitely not natural.

io9: And speaking of Bitch Pudding—I’ve always wanted to ask you about this. What was the origin of that? How were you asked to play her? Was that a voice you always had on deck?

Sackhoff: You know what’s funny is that voiceover work doesn’t come naturally to me. And one of the things with Seth Green and Matt (Senreich) that is so awesome is that they bring you in and they pull these voices out of me because they’re there. We just have to find them. Okay, and so Bitch Pudding was—I went in to play (Battlestar Galactica‘s) Starbuck. And you know, they’re notoriously cheap over there. And I was done in about five minutes. And then they were like, “Well, maybe you should play these other characters.” Because we bought you for 30 minutes and one of the characters was Bitch Pudding. And I don’t know where that character came from.

io9: Your guttural soul.

Sackhoff: Somewhere deep within that anguish part. It’s a lot easier to play Laurie, I have to tell you.

io9: So Silk Spectre was something you didn’t have to really pull at?

Sackhoff: She was just there. And like I said, I understood her anguish. I understand who she is as a person. And this story is great. I love it. I love that they’re staying true to the book. And I’m excited to see what fans think.

io9: The integration of all the details was amazing. Did you get a script first, or just read your lines as written on the day you recorded?

Sackhoff: No, so I did get the script. As soon as the idea came across of doing this, in playing Silk Spectre, the script does come to you. And I read the script and they sort of practiced it in the idea of like, you know, this is true in the book. And that was enough for me to sign on. And I really, really loved it. And then working with Brandon was so great. And, you know, he really helped me channel into the pain in Laurie and making sure that that would come across.

io9: Did you have anything in mind about your performance that you wanted to do differently from the live-action movie and Malin Ackerman’s portrayal?

Sackhoff: Oh gosh. You know, what’s funny is I’ve had the pleasure multiple times of taking characters that were not originated by myself and making them my own. And I think that this is, you know, what makes Laurie special is no different than that. I love what was established by the talent to (play her) before me. And I think that that comparison, though, would, for myself … is something that I just can’t do. So as soon as I signed on to do this, I did not go and look at any more Watchmen because I knew at that point that I would be trying to emulate instead of create.

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Finally, we spoke to Titus Welliver about his kinder, gentler performance as Rorschach.

io9: How excited were you to join this and voice Rorschach? 

Titus Welliver: Oh, very privileged and extremely excited. I got the book when it first came out and have been a huge fan of it for years. And like everyone else who was a fan of the book, teasing over the years that there would someday be a movie … and finally, Zack Snyder makes the film and (it’s) great. And so to be a part of this, which is basically a, you know, the animated feature and the amazing job with the animation are basically the panels come to life. So it’s an honor.

io9: How much tuning and calibration did you have to do with the gravel in your voice before deciding “I’m going to go this far, no further”?

Welliver: It took a minute and we recorded a portion of it on the first day and there was something that was nagging me and we kind of came back together and I just said there’s something that’s not right. So obviously I couldn’t do I wasn’t going to do a straight lift of Jackie (Earle Haley)’s performance, but his performance was great. And there was something there and I wanted to pay homage to his work. It was incredible. We found it on the second day and now all the vocal training I had in conservatory. None of that came in the play because it was all, “Raaah.”

io9: Yeah, it sounded like your voice must have been shot after a couple hours.

Welliver: Right.

io9: So, your version of Rorschach felt a little more nuanced—almost as if he were on the spectrum. He wasn’t exactly cultivating this persona to push people away, he was being his authentic self and didn’t understand people’s reactions to it. Was that something you were aiming for?

Welliver: Yeah. And actually, the director and I, we kind of talked about that because I’d said, regardless of characters (being) good, bad or indifferent on a level, in his journey, his moral compass is moving in the right direction. But he’s in this process, and the fact that he’s dealing with all the stuff that he’s dealing with … It’s not that you have to make a character likable, but I felt like I wanted to leave something there that would resonate with people that were watching it (and) that there was something there with a level of humanity in that character. And that’s difficult … that part of it was really, really interesting to do. So I’m glad that that came through.

io9: His friendship with Dan really shines through. When he breaks into his house and apologizes, “Sorry, I ate your beans,” that felt like a legitimate concern on his part and not just a power move.

Welliver: Yeah. You’re you’re you’re spot on with that. It’s hard when you’re in something, you’re trying. That’s my intent. You know, process of recording these things, there’s some stuff that you have to kind of withdraw. But we were really given the amount of time to really find it and do it properly. So it wasn’t just like, “Yeah, it’s not good. Let’s go.” We really, really took our time. And I think having only seen clips and stuff in the trailer and not seen it, I’m really excited to see it. So I’m going to finally get to do that.

io9: And you recorded all of your lines in isolation, right? No one else was in the booth with you?

Welliver: Yeah. No, I didn’t get to meet—I mean, I knew Katee from Mandalorian. And also we both worked on a Batman thing (Batman: The Long Halloween) …  So yeah, there wasn’t any of that interaction, unfortunately, but in a way it was kind of cool because everybody had the freedom to kind of stay on what you needed to do on task.

io9: We’re huge fans of Deadwood. You didn’t come back for the movie, though. You were filming Bosch, right?

Welliver: Yeah, yeah. That kind of precluded me. I would have loved to come back. But yeah, Bosch, I was shooting that. But I thought they did a great job with it. So it’s really cool to see those characters again.

io9: Were there plans for Silas that you were privy to?

Welliver: There had been talk about it ages ago, but you know, that’s been an ongoing conversation for years. “Oh, they’re going to do it. Oh, they’re not going to do it.” … There (weren’t) any further conversations beyond that. But I was disappointed only because I loved playing that character. It was such a tight family of actors under the brilliant umbrella of David Milch. So I was bummed, but I thought (the movie) was great.

io9:  You were also in a fan-favorite episode of The X-Files, “Darkness Falls.”

Welliver: Oh, it was a great experience, but it was hard. It poured rain the entire time. Yeah, thank you. But it was wonderful and it forged a relationship with David Duchovny and Jason Beghe and Gillian Anderson. It was a wonderful experience. I was a fan of the show. I desperately wanted to do it. I remember my manager at the time said, “Oh, that show’s going to be off the air.” And I said, “I think it’s a really good show. I want to do it.” So the opportunity came along and I did it. And I fired that manager because he was very wrong.

Watchmen: Chapter 1 stars the voices of Titus Welliver, Katee Sackhoff, Corey Burton, Adrienne Barbeau, Kelly Hu, Michael Cerveris, Jeffrey Combs, Phil Lamarr, Matthew Rhys, Yuri Lowenthal, Geoff Pierson, Dwight Shultz, Kari Wahlgren, John Marshall Jones, Max Koch, Jason Spisak, and Rick D. Wasserman.

It’s available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Fandango at Home; the 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray versions arrive August 27.

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