We caught up with Jackie Earle Haley who plays the Comedian and Jeffrey Dean
Morgan who plays Rorshach at Comic Con to talk to them about their roles in the
upcoming movie Watchmen based on the smash hit comic book.

“Watchmen” is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes
are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which
charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes
to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no
less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kil and
discredit all past and present superheroes.

As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired
superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-
ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic
consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity… but who is
watching the Watchmen?”

Jeffrey, I was really intrigued by what you said about the evening. You had that key scene with Carla, the rape scene; can you talk more about what that did to you and how it stays with you?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Well, I think you’re probably sitting at a table with the guys that are
probably the most screwed up in this movie. Our characters were screwed up and I think as
actors we had a lot of challenges to go through and that scene in particular was just a
really…it was vicious. I don’t how I can describe it and I knew going in…I mean I read the
graphic novel and I saw what it was…but in shooting it, I made the mistake of going back
and looking at a little bit of playback on the monitor and it was maybe the biggest mistake
I made in the course of my acting career because what I saw was…it was repulsive. It was
repulsive and regardless of….and I don’t claim to be a big method actor or anything else. I
do my work and I enjoy it but that was a rough couple days shooting that scene and like
you said it stuck with me and it still…I still have it in my head. Some of the stuff The
Comedian does are things you can’t make excuses for as an actor. Even as an actor and
even like oh, I’m going to play this guy as a complete bastard, but it’s stuff that doesn’t
go away sometimes.

Clearly some actors say that they don’t play villains as villains. They play them
as people who have certain motivation.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Yeah.

But Edward Blake is like a really bad guy.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Yeah, yeah. And you wonder what his motivation is sometimes. I was
constantly trying to find out what Edward Blake’s motivation was because some of the
things he does, I think it’s just the way he is. He’s just built that way. It’s kind of a fine line,
also though trying to find….because you don’t hate him. You don’t hate The Comedian no
matter what he does these things and yet when I read the book anyway, I was like why
don’t I hate this guy? What is it about him? You almost feel sympathetic to him at a
certain point when he’s with Molak and you even had sympathy so trying to find that
razors edge and being able to walk that was kind of a great deal as an actor to kind of
play and do but yeah there were some actions that The Comedian does—that scene with
Carla in particular—that will stay with me for a little while, yeah.

Jackie, were you prepared for the reaction you got in Hall H and the reaction
you’re going to be getting in the next couple of months playing “Rorschach”?
Are you prepared for this onslaught?

Jackie Earle Haley: Ah, I don’t know.

It’s going to be big. It’s going to be big.

Jackie Earle Haley: It’s wonderfully exciting. I mean, through the process I’ve become a fan
of the source material and it’s like I’m half excited to be part of this movie and wow, this is
incredible! And then I’m half-geeking out like a fan-boy. You know what I mean? This is just
like…I was watching that footage with you guys—that’s the first time I’d seen it—and I had
to keep pushing my mouth closed, you know, I’m trying to look cool like…that’s amazing.
Snyder rocks.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Yeah, we couldn’t believe it. We were just like hitting each other.

The scene where you were thrown out the window, how the hell did they shoot that?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Cool, I got thrown out the window. I did wire work for it and that was
actually the first opening sequence was the first thing I shot in the movie, the first thing we
shot period in the film as a matter of fact, and we did wires and stuff. It was a lot of fun.

That was really you like…?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Yeah, yeah that’s me in every frame of that. Yeah, it was cool. I
actually had a great time doing it. As a matter of fact, the first couple times I went out
the window—this was Zack talking to me and it’s like ok, can you do one without smiling
because you know it’s just a free-fall like 7 stories on these wires and then at the bottom
you’re just kind of laying…it was just like being at Disneyland. I had to get it in my head
that no, no I’m falling to my death, but it was a really cool deal. And Zack and the guy
who shot it, Larry Fong, are amazing. What we just saw blows my mind. I mean, did you
guys dig it?

Yeah, yeah. It’s going to be okay.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: You think it’s going to be all right? I feel okay about it too.

Fantastic.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Looks really cool.

Jackie, did you set yourself in Rorschach’s mindset for this kind of troubling
or do you find it really easy to immerse yourself through the entire process?

Jackie Earle Haley: You know I gotta….this is really comforting for me to be here with
Jeffrey to hear him say what he said. This is never like stuck in my head like a character.
Usually I can leave him on the set. You do your thing, you leave him on the set. Even like
when I was playing that character in “Little Children” I mean that’s a pretty real messed up
guy, but I could leave him on the set. For the most part I did with Rorschach but there were
some things that…I had your exact same experience. I’m so glad to hear that you had that.
Sorry, but you know in dealing with specifically one I think that really stuck with me the
most—and I don’t want to give too much detail—but how Rorschach dealt with the child-
molester and the way we shot that. I mean there’s no problem. I can go back and do it
again, you know what I mean, but there was just something about it that man, literally it
didn’t keep me from sleeping but while I was trying to go to sleep, literally every
night….geez okay, come on don’t go there, you know? It’s kind of weird.

Did you have to shave your goatee and get a wig on?

Jackie Earle Haley: Oh yeah, yeah.

Can you guys give any details of anything that you had to bring to the character
to make it live onscreen that just didn’t work on the page…directly transferring
that you really had to add to it?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan: You know the kind of…and I think we all went through this. It was an
amazing transformation that happened when we put on our costumes. For me, I just really
needed a cigar in my mouth. There was kind of so much preparation. We were immersed in
“Watchman” world 4, 5, 6 months before we started shooting. We were in Vancouver 3
months before so a lot of stuff…there was a lot of rehearsal and talking time before we
started shooting, but I think by the time that shooting started, we were dialed in pretty
much. Not that during shooting there weren’t questions, because I’ve never asked more
questions in my life of any character I’ve ever done. But working with the other actors and
Zack, you know, we were able to try anything but using the graphic novel as our bible.
Does that answer the question?