Watchmen star Jean Smart decided to diagnose why Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre’s relationship is so strange in the HBO show. The two former crime-fighters only share the screen for a short time in the series, but it becomes very clear that Laurie Blake doesn’t know what to do about the man she used to love when she sees him. Smart talked to the Los Angeles Times about a bunch of topics surrounding the show, but Blake’s internal workings proved to be the most gripping element for the actress. Whenever she and Regina King’s Angela Abar share the screen, there is palpable chemistry between the two. They’re both very alike, and that’s why it makes so much sense that Dr. Manhattan would become somewhat infatuated with Angela while barely acknowledging Laurie when its time for the big confrontation near the climax.
“That says a lot about her. Then she finds out that he is living here with another woman. She thinks that she’s kind of got it all together, but she’s really kind of a mess,” Smart began. “And she tells Angela [Regina King] that, you know, you don’t strike me as the kind of person who has friends. I’m thinking just look in the mirror! She’s living alone, in an apartment with an owl and has a closet full of black pantsuits and no social life whatsoever. She’s in love with a man who, like you said, she hasn’t seen in 30 years. And another guy who’s in prison. A shrink would have a field day with her.”
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In the same interview, Smart also talked about how much of a treat it was for her to play Laurie in the HBO series.
“This is what actors crave. I mean, yes, sometimes you want to do stuff that’s just fun and just entertainment,” the actress revealed. “But there was a quote from an actor a long time ago that said, ‘As an actor, if you want to believe that you can affect people in your audience in a good way, in a positive way, open their eyes to something.’”
“You also have to accept the fact that you can be a negative influence as well. You have to make your own personal wise choices about the kind of material you do. So you get to do something like “Watchmen,” it’s extremely rewarding,” she added. “And it was nice that the audience responded the way it did. Of course, we had no idea what was coming. Like I said, it’s prophetic to an alarming degree. We had no idea about the pandemic. We had no idea how the race relations were going to come to a head in 2020.”
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