July 24, 2008 - The night before the entire cast of Watchmen hit the stage for their Q&A session with 6,500 comic book/movie savvy fans at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, Matthew Goode ('Adrian Veidt'/'Ozymandias') was busy promoting another one of his projects – Brideshead Revisited. Goode certainly hasn't fallen victim to being pigeonholed into a certain genre, and his characters in Watchmen and Brideshead Revisited couldn't be further apart. One's a quiet student with a passion for art who finds himself at the center of a confusing love story. The other character's the smartest man on earth, an ex-costumed vigilante who's adored by billions.
Goode, a charming British actor with a resume which includes a critically acclaimed performance in The Lookout (one of the best films of 2007) and a starring role in Woody Allen's Match Point, is able to speak equally passionately about his Brideshead experience and his work in Watchmen. After focusing on Brideshead Revisited (read that interview here), our talk turned to all things Watchmen. Goode confessed to being nervous about facing the fans, although he is sure director Zack Snyder and the entire cast did everything in their power to bring Watchmen to life on the screen as faithfully as possible.
Matthew Goode Interview
Is it true you gave Adrian Veidt a German accent in Watchmen?
"Yes."
Why'd you do that?
"I had to give him some accent. [Laughing] He can't be English."
I guess most people would picture him as American. You decided he was from Germany?
"We don't know. There's no backstory, really. There's a little bit of backstory, but I was trying to find something to work with and the psychology, considering he's a villain but he's...everything that was him is sort of backwards in some ways in psychology. The villain of the piece is trying to save the world, which is an interesting sort of dichotomy in itself. So I was considering like the things in Under the Hood by Hollis Mason where he's talking about, 'Well, yeah, we were Nazis.' He's saying that about the heroes. I was thinking, 'Well maybe this guy was,' and not really just because of that. But wouldn't it be interesting if he gave his wealth away because his parents were Nazis? It's sort of in keeping with comic book theme in a way and fleshing it out."
"No one's going to really know [this backstory]. We didn't write this into it, it's just for me. So I was thinking maybe he was born in Germany, maybe he came over to America with an accent and it's something he had to kind of hide because of World War II, just on top of his level of intelligence that he was trying to hide anyway. So then therefore because you've got this sort of interesting notion that he sells out, he's seen as this guy that's sold out two years before the Keene Act and he's revered over all the other superheroes. Wouldn't it therefore be interesting if people sort of bought into the idea of the American dream. So he's got a perfect American accent when he's his public persona, and when he's with the Watchmen he's got this slight German-American accent."
That's such a weird take. I like it. I think it works.
"The more stressed he gets, the more the German accent creeps out a little bit towards the end."
When he's at home in his ice palace, in his own element, it emerges? How did you come to make the decision to use the accent?
"We shot the first day, we shot the first scene not thinking about any of that at all, which is the scene with Lee Iacocca. We did that and then I had like a couple of weeks break and I got pissed one night and I started thinking about things, as you do. …I picked up on that very early - it was like if you do it, if you get really drunk and think about how your character acts, I'm doing that. I've always done it. It clears my mind. I was like, 'Zack, what do you think about that?' And he was like, 'Awesome.'"
So he jumped on it right away?
"Well, I mean, he was worried about it, particularly at that time because I wasn't working very well with a voice coach. And then suddenly I had made it very hard for myself. And he was like, 'I think it brings something really interesting to it.' There's just more levels that complicates the character."
Does it get explained in this story? Is it spelled out at all? We're going to understand it because we've read Watchmen but will others understand where it's coming from?
"Normally I don't talk about my backstories, I leave that just for me. So I feel a need to possibly get it out there a little bit so people might go, 'Oh that's interesting.' But I think it's, even if it's not explained, it's interesting. I think people, it's a very intelligent audience and I think people will, with the name - with Veidt - even if they don't get it that maybe my parents were Nazis and that's why I gave away the wealth, that was just me trying to find out why he's giving the wealth away."
Why?
"It's just nice because it counterbalances all the other characters who have these…like The Hooded Justice who was a Nazi, seemingly, so they acted in this way. Or maybe it's me just always trying to find the good in a character. I don't know."
Finding the good in this guy, how do you play a character who commits horrible acts but truly believes he's doing good?
"I think he's the only option open to humanity at that point. It has to be him because no one else is doing anything. Remember the Doomsday Clock – it's so close. When Dr Manhattan leaves suddenly there's a f--king World War III just around the corner. It's been years and he's seen it coming, that's how intelligent he is. He's seen this coming and he's had to plan for it and re-plan and it's going to happen at some point. That's one of the things that I think… It's like what Laurie [aka Silk Spectre II played by Malin Akerman] says. She's like, 'F--k, we almost stopped you from saving the world.'"
"Rorschach's obviously very upset with it and but you kind of see...Rorschach is the hero at the beginning and Veidt is the sellout. And by the end you don't know who is right, really, because Rorschach would, just for the sake of non-compromise, he would put the world back in huge amounts of danger again. And that's f--ked up. It's all f--ked up. But it's beautiful. We'll wait and see."
