Tim Blake Nelson has discussed the changes made to his character Looking Glass during the filming of Watchmen.
Airing on HBO last autumn, showrunner Damon Lindelof opened episode 5 ('Little Fear of Lightning') with a stunning flashback to 1985 which saw the young Looking Glass – real name Wade Tillman – as a Jehovah's Witness at the scene of Ozymandias' teleported squid attack.
Minutes before this nightmarish event took place, Wade had been lured into a house of mirrors by a young woman, where she tricked him into taking his clothes off and running away with them – leading to extreme future paranoia.
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Speaking on SiriusXM recently, the actor revealed that Wade's backstory had been originally very different, but it was changed after three episodes of the series had already been filmed.
"The backstory was entirely different. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it involved an interracial relationship that Wade had had that had ended very badly. And I loved that notion," he explained.
"I'm in an interracial marriage myself in my own real life and have three children in that marriage, and so these are issues that are very close to me. And although my interracial marriage has a very happy present — and, I think, future and past — Wade's was really tragic and really dark and really just changed the course of his life."
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Nelson went on to add: "Damon changed his mind about that and instead put Wade's sexual awakening back at the time of the squid attack in 1985 in the original Watchmen novel.
"I think that was a better decision for the show as a whole and really smart writing... I was just very, very excited to play this new story in a way that wasn't going to contravene anything I had done before."
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Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
