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When HBO’s Watchmen premiered in 2019, there was some discourse surrounding the casting of Doctor Manhattan. In Alan Moore’s original comic, the character is a white scientist who turns into a blue cosmic being. The HBO series cast Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, a black actor, in the role.

“I played Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen, and Doctor Manhattan was blue,” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II says during a recent THR Comedy Actor Roundtable. “He’s like a god. It was a conversation that I’m black and I played Doctor Manhattan, because, in terms of the [comic book] canon, Doctor Manhattan wasn’t blue, he was white.”

Abdul-Mateen continued, “There are pictures of me as Doctor Manhattan with like a chain, and like a dashiki, and like a Kofi, and things like that, and red laser eyes. I don’t know what the red laser eyes are really all about, but I find the humor in it. It’s like, 'If we’re going to make them black, let’s make them blackety black.' It makes me laugh though.”

To be clear, the series has Doctor Manhattan adopt the human identity of Cal Abar, who is black. Due to Doctor Manhattan’s cosmic powers, he could look like any human being of any race. In the original Watchmen comic he is able to see through time and instantly vaporize humans. People had no trouble buying that, so why is it so hard to buy a black actor playing him?

The HBO series Watchmen is streaming on HBO Max. 

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