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Damon Lindelof Heard Some ‘Hard Truths’ in the ‘Watchmen’ Writer’s Room
A conversation about race with the Watchmen creator, who was challenged by the most diverse group of writers in his career
Damon Lindelof’s new HBO series, Watchmen, finds the writer and show-runner a very long way from the “middle-aged white men and women having existential spiritual crises” at the heart of his best known previous work, Lost and The Leftovers. The new show — based on the 1986 sci-fi alt-history created by Alan Moore, illustrator Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins — opens in the murderous furnace of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, in the midst of the police/KKK bombing of Black Wall Street. For the first time in his career, Lindelof is directly engaging with the issue of race, and he is fully aware of the tightrope he’s walking. “It’s hard to quantify worry,” he says during our hour-long chat. “I’ve been significantly and constantly worried since we embarked on this show.”
There is nothing new about a respected white man using the history of violence against black people as a canvas. To Lindelof’s credit, though, he seems to know that he shouldn’t be left to his own devices. In fact, it’s his history as a “benevolent dictator” in the writer’s room that pushed him to employ his most inclusive writing…
