UNVEILING THE LAYERS: SACKHOFF AND WELLIVER DIVE INTO THE DEPTHS OF "WATCHMEN" CHARACTERS

There’s plenty to love about the superhero narrative, but when Katee Sackhoff and Titus Welliver real people consisting of one with a past filled with space missions and the other with a murky career in law enforcement – jump on board, everything gets heightened. Known for roles as Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica (2004-09) and Harry Bosch in the TV series Bosch (2014-) respectively, Sackhoff and Welliver have now brought their gravitas to the tricky world of Watchmen: they voice Silk Spectre and Rorschach in the new movie adaptation for a new animated film. Here is the story of them getting into the role, the spirit that they bring, and the greater themes that Watchmen is all about.

KATEE SACKHOFF: EMBRACING VULNERABILITY TO FORGE STRENGTH

The Intricate Silk Spectre

Sackhoff is drawn to the role of Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre, because of her ventriloquism experience, because of the big, multi-faceted character who is hiding behind the veil of a superhero: She is so vulnerable… and that is why she is so relatable … And what I am trying to do with Silk Spectre is stop calling her a hero. She is not a hero, she is a person who has emotions and is allowed to feel things.’

TITUS WELLIVER: FINDING HUMANITY IN THE DARKNESS

The Enigmatic Rorschach

‘What people are seeing when they see Rorschach is not so much all of his ambiguity as it is the agony of this quest for justice,’ Welliver says. He points to Rorschach’s intellectual nature, and his tortured past, as some of the things he will carry forward when portraying the character. Pullman agrees that Welliver should not simply re-create the often-emulated character. ‘He has to find something that’s human beneath that character,’ Pullman says. ‘This is a guy, at his core, whose existence is about as much about profound depth as it is about profound pain.’

A DEEP DIVE INTO CHARACTER PSYCHE

Instead, Sackhoff and Welliver talk about how their characters have emotional baggage, and what’s at stake is delving into their vulnerabilities and nuances. Sackhoff, for example, wants you to see the multifaceted humanity of the character behind Silk Spectre’s mask, while Welliver wants you to see the humanity beneath Rorschach’s mask, a man with a dark inner life and a sense of nobility despite his psychopathic tendencies.

MORE THAN JUST A SUPERHERO MOVIE

This willingness to touch many difficult and ambiguous themes is part of what makes the animated Watchmen a creative achievement – and one of the most addictive storytelling experiences of recent years. Both Sackhoff and Welliver point out that the film peers deeply into questions of what makes someone a good person, what justice looks like, and how to live up to an ideal of heroism that is ultimately impossible. If this work of high-art pop culture also helps uncover something real about the human condition, and if it makes audiences care more deeply about ordinary people – questions of identity, truth and agency – following their individual narratives into a complicated world, then the superhero genre suddenly gains a moral and emotional power that it hasn’t always had.

HOPES FOR THE AUDIENCE

At the end of the discussion, both actors comment on what they would like audiences to take away from the film. Sackhoff wants them to sense the internal conflicts and emotions that make Silk Spectre who she is. Welliver, meanwhile, wants us to admire the structural layers that give Rorschach form and humanity, and to feel the power of the story told through the characters. What could be better than a film with a plot that is rich in nuance and a profound experience of the characters’ journeys?

UNDERSTANDING THE ESSENCE OF "SENSE"

The characters of Silk Spectre and Rorschach break out of the shallow mould that defines so many superhero stories; they become recognisably human, and demand that we think with complexity, vulnerability and empathy. This if the sense that stories can offer when they offer character. Sense, then, is as much about the world as the character. And if Watchmen succeeds in embedding sense throughout its narrative, the result is perhaps a pedagogic, or critical, emperor with inadequate clothes. If nothing else, it encourages viewers to think beyond the hero to the messy, human morality that marks us all.