During a HomeCon panel, Andrew Howard discussed what it was like to play Red Scare on Watchmen — and whether he’d like to explore the character further in the future.
With large gatherings canceled or postponed for the time being, pop-culture conventions won’t be happening until the end of this year at the earliest. Luckily for fans, however, Rachel Skarsten and Paul Amos put together a virtual event to hold them over in the meantime: HomeCon. The event was held on Twitch last weekend, featuring two days of panels covering some of the biggest television shows and films currently — and that includes HBO’s Watchmen.
The virtual Watchmen panel saw Andrew Howard, who played Red Scare in the series, discussing what it was like to land a role on HBO, how he went about portraying his character, and what he would have liked more time to explore.
According to Howard, he was in Utah working on a show called The Outpost when he first heard about the role. It took some negotiating to get out of that contract in order to sign on for Watchmen, but Howard managed it.
“I just got sent one page of material, and I had to put myself on camera,” he explained. “So I shot it. All they said was the character was called Red Scare. He was Russian. And so I shot this little piece of footage, and then a couple of weeks later, I got word that they were very interested, and I got the offer.”
After receiving the offer, Howard did his reseach on his character, piecing together what sort of backstory Red Scare might have with help from series creator Damon Lindelof.
“I created my own ,” Howard said. “I did a lot of research on the Red Scare world and where the name comes from — you know, post-Cold War. So I created the whole character, and then Damon would give me tidbits of where he saw the character going.”
According to the actor, Lindelof was incredibly accommodating, responding to text messages and phone calls even from across the country. Despite being in Los Angeles when the cast was filming in Atlanta, Lindelof was “available” to discuss Howard’s character and his motivations.
Howard did admit, however, that he would have liked the opportunity to delve further into his character. For the majority of Watchmen, Red Scare serves as comic relief, dropping one-liners but not giving viewers much insight into what he’s doing there. Of course, the series spent most of its limited time fleshing out its main characters, but that doesn’t mean the cast and the viewers wouldn’t have liked to see more of the side characters.
“I will confess, by the end of the run, I was slightly disappointed personally that Red hadn’t come to the forefront more because I knew that they had — Damon told me the trajectory, and it didn’t quite happen and I understand why, but personally I was a little gutted about it,” Howard said.
Despite Red Scare not getting much screen time in Watchmen, Howard did suggest that he’d be down to reprise the role at a later time. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any plans to expand on the HBO series just yet, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never happen.
“Maybe one day we will explore it,” Howard said. “Who knows?”
Either way, it seems the actor had a positive experience being part of such an iconic series. He affirmed that he was “proud to be part of this show,” touching on how relevant and important Watchmen was.
“I know that Alan Moore was very skeptical about the show happening, and I think Damon knew that as well,” Howard said. “But what I do think is that it was something very prevalent, something of our time. It was addressing new issues through the universe of Alan Moore’s graphic novel. And I think it was incredibly powerful. It sets a standard, I think, in terms of how we try and tell new stories about superheroes. Most of the superheroes in our show don’t have superhuman powers — or do they?”
That last bit might be left up to viewers’ interpretation, but he’s certainly right that Watchmen has set a certain standard for similar series that follow it. Let’s hope we see more like it in the future — perhaps maybe even one that’s focused on Watchmen‘s Red Scare.
Would you be interested in exploring Red Scare’s character further? Do you want Damon Lindelof to continue working on projects in the Watchmen universe? Sound off in the comments below.