Watchmen: Chapter I Titus Welliver Discusses Voicing Rorschach in Watchmen: Chapter 1 (2024)

Hello, sir. How are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm doing very well. Thank you. You get to play the wonderful character of Walter Kovacs, also known as Rorschach. So tell me, why did you want to take on this character? Because he's the protagonist. I tend to lean into those type of characters. Certainly anti-heroes. And having been a huge fan of the graphic novel, to say that I was beyond excited would be an understatement when I first got the call to do this.

My biggest concern, of course, was I said, please tell me that you're not going to deviate from the original musculature that was so brilliantly created. They went, no, no, no, we're doing cell animation with CG animation, and we are basically going to bring the panels to life. And when I saw some of the, they showed me some blurbs, you know, a couple months after we had started, and I was really stunned.

Because I thought, you know, wow. And Zack Snyder did such an amazing job with the feature. But this, I think, is going to to scratch those itches that people have been feeling for a long time. So I'm thrilled to be a part of it. And he's a great character. You know, he's, you know. That gravelly voice. Yeah, that gravelly voice. Let me tell you, it's a taxing, you know, day in that vocal area, which, you know, can't be supported by any of the stuff they teach you in drama school about.

Voice. I could only record for a couple hours, because it would blow my voice out. But it was well worth it. Touching on the Zack Snyder version, and even the HBO series, was there any trepidation of taking on this character because it has been played before? To be honest with you, I couldn't... It's sort of a direct line, you know, that I was asked a lot when I took on the role of Bosh.

You know, people were saying, you know, although it had never been realized, before on the screen, certainly the audio books had been... The earlier audio books had been done by different artists. And I knew that I had to kind of stick with... certain parameters of it. But I didn't want to... I didn't want to come in and just, you know, do an impression of Jackie as Rorschach.

And he did a magnificent job. I mean, a great job. So it was very hard. I had to really make a concerted effort to... to not go back and watch the film during that period, because it would be very easy to slide into it because he did it so perfectly. You always need to make something, you know, your own to a certain degree, but you can't deviate from it too far.

So for me, that was the challenge, but also, you know, the thrill and the joy of doing it. You can deviate, but you'll piss off the fans. So you don't want to do that. Well, people don't understand. And because I'm a person who grew up, you know, reading comic books, I'm a collector, not only of comic books, but of, you know, figures and the whole thing.

I am a bonafide card-carrying nerd. And I hate to say nerd because it has... It seems like it's a pejorative, but I sort of take that label with... You wear that badge of honor with pride, sir. I wear it with pride. So, of course, you know, that's the... Because of that, I understand the value of what that job entails, because, you know, that's really the contract, right? -Yeah. -You know, you got to do it till it's right. ♪ ♪ you Thank you.