This post contains plot details for the November 3 Watchmen episode “She Was Killed by Space Junk.”
“She Was Killed by Space Junk” is the third episode of HBO’s Watchmen sequel series—and the first featuring Jean Smart as Laurie Blake, one of the central figures in the original graphic novel. Laurie was the former Silk Spectre, a costumed vigilante debuted by her glamorous mother Sally Jupiter. In the comic—which takes place 30 years before the series—Laurie’s romance with Dr. Manhattan, the most powerful man in the world, is upended by an affair with Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl.
Neither man makes an appearance, exactly, in the new show. But “She Was Killed by Space Junk” is Watchmen’s closest engagement yet with its source material, drawing in Dr. Manhattan’s communications with earth, Nite Owl’s actual owl (Laurie feeds it a mouse, deadpanning that its name is Who), and with restrained characterization, sketching out how her character has spent the last three decades. Smart crackles from the minute she steps onscreen; twice, in just this episode, her crack shot aim fells an assailant before he can retaliate against innocents.
In the original Watchmen, writer Alan Moore seemed to not know what to do with Laurie outside of her romantic entanglements. She’s a young character—Malin Akerman played her in the 2009 film adaptation—and by the time she grows and changes, the story’s over. The new Watchmen introduces a markedly more competent woman in Smart’s Laurie—one who immediately butts heads with Angela (Regina King), who moonlights as Tulsa’s heroine Sister Night.
I spoke to Smart on the phone about her character’s first episode. Smart, who cackled with mirth throughout our phone call, assured me that she might not be able to answer all my questions. “I don’t have a clue” about the backstory, she laughed. But the show’s decision to turn real-life celeb Robert Redford into the nation’s latest celebrity president tickled her fancy. “Is that the Sundance Kid?” she recollected asking, seeing his grainy photo on set. “If he’d wanted,” she told me, he really could have been president. “But I’m sure he never did.”
Vanity Fair: Tell me a little bit about doing this role that was such a major one in the comic.
Jean Smart: You have a responsibility, you know, toward the source material and everything. But something like 34 years have gone by since we last saw her, so—she’s changed. She acts like she’s got everything under control—like she’s got the jump on everybody. It’s interesting to see how she’s dealt with this kind of lonely existence she has.
It’s fun to try to characterize that—someone who’s got that smart-ass sense of humor, but is often kind of using it as a way to keep people away.
She’s been through a lot…. She’s obviously got a lot of anger and pain. And you think, why on earth would she still be waiting for this man who’s kind of superhuman?
But she does miss Dr. Manhattan.
I mean, you never get over your first love. But, come on, Laurie!
The little pay-per-call phone booths to Mars were an incredible detail. As is, of course, that huge blue Dr. Manhattan dildo.
Oh, my god. They sent me the script and when they offered me the part and I’m reading, going “Oh, this is so fun—oh, my God! No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
That was one of the first things I asked Damon [Lindelof, showrunner]: “Okay, what have you got in store for me?” He was like, No, no, don’t worry, don’t worry…. Then I thought, You know what? It’s a good thing my parents are gone. That’s all.