Watchmen - Billy Crudup Interview
Billy Crudup stars as Dr. Manhattan in Warner Bros Pictures' 'Watchmen,' based on the acclaimed graphic novel. At the 2009 WonderCon, Crudup talked about having to wear a motion capture suit and how his co-stars spent the shoot teasing him.
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Transcript: Watchmen - Billy Crudup Interview
Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the 2009 WonderCon.
Billy Crudup - 'Jon Osterman'/'Dr Manhattan' in Watchmen
It takes you a while to get used to having [the blue dots] all over your face. Do you change how you're acting underneath that?Billy Crudup: "Well, you have to be very careful about getting self-conscious because needless to say the character that I was playing didn't walk around feeling quite so humiliated all the time. I think he was maybe a little bit more in charge of his power. But it helped me in terms of the sense of isolation, because Dr. Manhattan certainly gets isolated and quite lonely, and finds it harder and harder to connect to people. And that was the same for me, with all those dots on my face."
Were they laughing at you the whole time?
Billy Crudup: "Yep."
Did they ever get over it, get past it?
Billy Crudup: "Nope."
The whole time they were laughing at those dots on your face and the blue suit.
Billy Crudup: "That's correct. Yes, yes. Very unimpressive – jackasses."
How do you keep under control when you see the people you're acting with are reacting to what's on your body?
Billy Crudup: "You just go to a very safe place in your head. Well, you know, ultimately I have a great deal of interest and it's my job to preserve the screenplay's vision of Dr. Manhattan and realize it, and render a truthful performance. So, you know, you do everything you can."
How tough was it to come up with that voice – to be detached and yet still be a part of the story?
Billy Crudup: "That was the monumental challenge for me. It wasn't just that, but finding a voice that would resonate in a body that I'd never seen before. That was an interesting and one of a kind challenge."
How much did you have to play with that? I'm sure that what we saw in the finished film isn't what you started off with, is it?
Billy Crudup: "No. It was a six month balancing act, you know? There's probably three or four other characters that he could cut from the different ways that we did it while we were shooting in an attempt to try and find it. We even added some different kind of resonance to the voice when we were doing some ADR. So, it was a balancing act."
Jon and Dr. Manhattan are so different. Do you play them as two different people or were you playing them as one character?
Billy Crudup: "Yeah, they're definitely two different people. I mean, when Jon recreates himself, he doesn't just do it in a physical way. There's a philosophical recreation, I mean. So the elements that remain the same were his sense of himself as a sort of dutiful '50s government man. You know, whatever my government approves of or wants from me, I'm there to serve. But I think he certainly lost a lot of his youthful optimism and the joy that he had in life."
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