Gordon Jackson, io9: Youve been with Warner Brothers Animation for a long time, right?
Brandon Vietti:Twenty years.
io9: …and now youre onWatchmen.
© Warner Bros.
How do you feel about that?
Vietti:It was intimidating.
But also tremendous joy, because I respect the material so much.
© Warner Bros.
I was a fan of the book.
The complexity of the storytelling, the characters, the world-buildingits unmatched.
I love that kind ofpuzzle-solving involved in trying to adapt.
© Warner Bros.
It was just a lot of fun for me and my entire group.
Had you at any point said to yourself, This hasnt been done before.
I really want to adapt this the way I see it?
© Warner Bros.
io9: Oh, really?
Thats something that I think a comic book would have difficultly portraying.
A film can do it very well.
© Warner Bros.
I think animation can do it best.
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 characters been memed so much, in recent years.
Hes been parodied a lot.
I mean, hopefully what we did does come through.
io9: It does.
But the image of him sitting on the rock on Marstheres a popular meme surrounding that.
Were you warned against putting that image in there?
Again, my entire focus was capturing the spirit of the original book.
Did you feel the text itself was absolutely sacrosanct?
Vietti:Yeah, but theres 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.
Sort of reorganize some scenes.
Make very difficult cuts.
We didnt 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.
io9: So,Watchmen: How excited were you to join this?
Katee Sackhoff:Oh my gosh.
I look at if its something that Im intrigued to see.
I have to do this.
This is super cool.
Your performance in this felt legitimately anguished.
Sackhoff:Thank you.
I think LaurieI identified with a lot of the things that she feels.
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.
Sackhoff:I didnt, sadly.
You know, Titus and I have had the pleasure of working together once in person onMandalorian.
And then weve done quite a bit of voiceover jobs together at this point but weve never recorded together.
So I think thats next for us.
Were going to have to at some point get in a room.
But wouldnt that have been awesome?
But it never seems to happen.
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 PuddingIve 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 whats funny is that voiceover work doesnt come naturally to me.
We just have to find them.
Okay, and so Bitch Pudding wasI went in to play [Battlestar Galacticas] Starbuck.
And you know, theyre 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 dont know where that character came from.
io9: Your guttural soul.
Sackhoff:Somewhere deep within that anguish part.
Its a lot easier to play Laurie, I have to tell you.
io9: So Silk Spectre was something you didnt 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 that theyre staying true to the book.
And Im 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.
And that was enough for me to sign on.
And I really, really loved it.
And then working with Brandon was so great.
Sackhoff:Oh gosh.
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.
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.
So its an honor.
And there was something there and I wanted to pay homage to his work.
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.
Was that something you were aiming for?
And thats difficult … that part of it was really, really interesting to do.
So Im glad that that came through.
io9: His friendship with Dan really shines through.
Youre youre youre spot on with that.
Its hard when youre in something, youre trying.
You know, process of recording these things, theres 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 wasnt just like, Yeah, its not good.
We really, really took our time.
So Im 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?
No, I didnt get to meetI mean, I knew Katee fromMandalorian.
And also we both worked on a Batman thing [Batman: The Long Halloween] … io9: Were huge fans ofDeadwood.
You didnt come back for the movie, though.
You were filmingBosch, 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 its really cool to see those characters again.
io9: Were there plans for Silas that you were privy to?
Oh, theyre going to do it.
Oh, theyre not going to do it.
There [werent] 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 ofThe 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 shows going to be off the air.
And I said, I think its 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.
Want more io9 news?
News from the future, delivered to your present.
