When the seminal “Watchmen” was released in 1986-87, first as a limited series of 12 comics and then as a graphic novel that remains one of the genre’s most important works, it was a mystery about masked heroes and geopolitics firmly set in New York City.
When “Watchmen,” a new HBO series, premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday and picks up the novel’s story in the present day, the setting is Tulsa.
Not New York or Los Angeles, the usual suspects that have too often felt like the only places that TV shows and movies can be set.
There were two reasons to choose Tulsa, said Damon Lindelof, the show’s creator.
“One was that it seems like everything always takes place in one of two places, and (I wanted) to ground ‘Watchmen’ and make it feel real, (because) I’ve always thought ‘Watchmen’ was about America,” he said.
“So I had it in mind to pick a more nontraditional place to set the show, and I was thinking ‘How would that look?’”
Tulsa entered the conversation after the writer-producer, one of the creators of TV’s “Lost” and writer of films like “World War Z” and “Star Trek Into Darkness,” read “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehesi Coates.
That essay became the first time that Lindelof had heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the destruction of the Greenwood District. It pushed him to learn more.
“I was 43 or 44, and I wondered how could it be that I’ve never heard about this. Then I read more, and I said Tulsa was the right place to set the show,” Lindelof told the Tulsa World in a phone interview.
And staging the massacre was the right way to begin the first episode, Lindelof said, of a series that still includes masked heroes in 2019 but also explores race relations among other issues.
For “Watchmen,” he wrote an epic scene set during the massacre, featuring an attack full of gunfire, fires being set and people being herded down Greenwood Avenue amid random violence and death.
There’s a significance to this: following announcements in recent years by Oprah Winfrey’s production company and black filmmaker Tim Story and others about making race-massacre productions ahead of the event’s centennial, it is a white man who becomes the first to stage the 1921 massacre on such an epic scale.
Also significant was the duty to get that representation right.
“The short answer is that I feel an enormous amount of pressure, because it’s not my story in any way, shape or form. But I think that what happened is an American story,” Lindelof said.
“(It’s about) the conversation we’re struggling to have in this country in getting to know our own history, and for me, this happened in 1921 and I knew nothing about it, and I thought, I have this very big megaphone (as a producer of film and TV projects), and I can shine a light on this very important piece of history — not to make people feel shame, but my feeling is ‘Lets start talking about it.’”
“This Sunday (with the first of nine episodes), I hope a couple million people react with: Is that real? Did that really happen?”
Lindelof commended the many “incredible collaborators” that he had on the production, “many of them people of color, and I did a lot of real listening. And hearing. And if they had told me, ‘Don’t do this,’ I would not have.”
A genesis for the project, as Lindelof said in a recent interview with Deadline, was his pondering the political landscape of today compared to Cold War fears of the original “Watchmen,” and determining: “What is the undefeatable evil that superheroes can never defeat?” for his new story.
“Using that (concept) in a broad, generalized way, as a genre convention with good guys fighting bad guys, I thought as a youngster that Russia was evil, and if someone (my age) was Russian at that time, they probably thought the U.S. was evil,” he said.
“(Today) I think a card-carrying member of the KKK is evil, but when Trump made that comment about there being good people on both sides, well, this conversation is very complex.”
But “just so we’re clear, white supremacy is bad. I’d be willing to debate anyone who’s on the side of saying that white supremacy is good.”
Lindelof moved forward on “Watchmen” with a cast including Regina King in the lead role, as a masked Tulsa police detective, as well as Don Johnson, Jeremy Irons, Jean Smart and Tulsa native Tim Blake Nelson, playing a fellow detective who wears a reflective mask.
Lindelof said he was excited to learn that Nelson would be able to do the project and further thrilled upon learning that Nelson was born and raised in Tulsa.
“Tim was very much thinking it would be good to have someone who is representative, and Tim is valuable because he doesn’t have to pretend (about knowing Tulsa), though he has to pretend about many other things in the show,” Lindelof said.
“And Tim is both a writer and director, and an outstanding one, so he has such an understanding, such an innate sense, of what we’re trying to do ... . He and I have been having some incredible conversations.”
As a side note, Lindelof said he does not “generally think of there being a lot of people in the industry from Tulsa.” But then he heard from another one rather quickly.
“As soon as we announced it would be set in Tulsa, like the next day, Bill Hader, who I know from (other projects), called me and said, ‘Hey, why are you picking on Tulsa?’” Lindelof said, with Hader apparently saying it with both a laugh as well as a sense of protectiveness.
“I told him, ‘Hey, you’ve got your own show (“Barry,” also on HBO), and you set it in Los Angeles.”
Nominated for best limited series, created by Damon Lindelof

The crime drama with elements of fantasy and science-fiction was set in Tulsa by the show’s creator, Damon Lindelof, who was inspired by his research into the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and even chose to open the series with a re-enactment of those events.
Best actress nominee Regina King plays the lead character

Academy Award-winner Regina King ("If Beale Street Could Talk") portrays Angela Abar, a police detective who was shot by white supremacist group members four years earlier, and who now tells people she is no longer an officer to protect her husband and two young children.
As a detective whose missions often call for violence, Angela dresses in all-black attire and is known as Sister Night, who could be described as an officer, a superhero, a vigilante — or all three. It's complicated.
How much does the setting in Tulsa play into the story?

Quite a bit, especially in the pilot episode. The opening minutes are a depiction of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which plays strongly into the show's primary theme of racial conflict. The musical "Oklahoma!" is a critical element in this episode's storytelling. There is a "Greenwood Center for Cultural Heritage" in this version of Tulsa. To say any more on these elements would be spoilers.
Alternate history and Greenwood

A key element of Lindelof's story is that these people live in a world where "Victims of Racial Violence Legislation" was passed which furnished reparations. "It’s a lifetime tax exemption for victims of, and the direct descendants of, designated areas of racial injustice throughout America’s history, the most important of which, as it relates to our show, is the Tulsa massacre of 1921," Lindelof told Entertainment Weekly.
Three best supporting actor nominees, but not Tim Blake Nelson

Tulsa native Tim Blake Nelson (seen in a mirrored mask) was considered a contender to receive his first Emmy Award nomination for his role as an enigmatic police detective in the series, but instead, there were three other actors from the show nominated in the limited series best supporting actor category — Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Lou Gossett Jr. and Jovan Adepo.
Nominee Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, seen here with Regina King, was nominated for best supporting actor in a limited series for his role as her husband.
Nominee Jovan Adepo

Jovan Adepo, playing Hooded Justice, was nominated for best supporting actor in a limited series along with Lou Gossett Jr. and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, for "Watchmen."
Nominations in every category for limited series

The nominations were announced Tuesday morning, and “Watchmen” received nods in every possible race in the category of limited series, including best program, writing and directing, and six acting nominations.
What are some other elements of the alternate history?

You have to wonder about the Tulsa economy and its connection to energy — in "Watchmen," cars run only on electricity or fuel cells, and there are no fossil fuels. You'll see landlines and pagers in use, but no cell phones, which are illegal. Robert Redford has been president for seven terms; before him, Richard Nixon was president for five terms (and his Watergate activities were never exposed). Don Johnson (pictured) played the Tulsa Police chief.
Who else stars in the "Watchmen" series?

Other “Watchmen” acting nominees included Jeremy Irons as best lead actor and Jean Smart as best supporting actress (pictured, as a former hero now working for the FBI to arrest masked vigilantes).
How much "Watchmen" will there be?

Maybe just one season, according to Lindelof, who recently said that as the lead writer he focused on telling a self-contained story that would wrap us with no cliffhanger ending as if leading into a second season. Pictured is Lou Gossett Jr., who was nominated for best supporting actor.
The Emmy competition for "Watchmen"

“Watchmen” will be competing for best limited series against “Mrs. America” from FX, the Netflix shows “Unbelievable” and “Unorthodox,” and Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere.”
The Emmy Awards will be announced during a ceremony set for Sept. 20.
Mark Hill/HBO
How to see 'Watchmen'

"Watchmen" can be seen exclusively, on HBO. Episodes run about one hour in length for its nine-episode season.
Yes, there was a movie based on the graphic novel

In 2009, Warner Bros. and filmmaker Zack Snyder ("300") released "Watchmen," an R-rated movie based on the 1980s source material that proved to be divisive among both audiences and critics. It was highly anticipated and had a $55 million opening weekend, but it became the rare movie that doesn't even double its three-day opening, ending at $107 million — at a cost of more than $130 million.
The source material

The source material
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Michael Smith
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