‘Watchmen’s’ Tim Blake Nelson: America’s white supremacist history has been ‘concealed’

In the latest episode of The Times’ TV podcast “Can’t Stop Watching,” staff writer and host Yvonne Villarreal asks “Watchmen” star Tim Blake Nelson whether he was aware of the HBO series’ animating incident — the massacre of black residents by a white mob in Tulsa in 1921 — as a child growing up in Oklahoma:

I knew very little. It was certainly not advertised in Oklahoma history courses or American history courses, and it should have been featured in each. It was only when I went to college and interviewed for a poetry class with an African American professor, a wonderful poet named Michael Wright, that I was asked about it: Was I aware that the worst race massacre — although he called it a “race riot” — in American history had occurred in the city in which I was raised? ... I would say it was concealed from us, as white kids growing up in Tulsa, Okla.

Listen to the full episode to hear Nelson talk about wearing his “Watchmen” character’s reflective costume, why he and his family decided to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic in New York and the safety protocols he’ll follow on a film shoot in Arkansas later this month. Plus, check out past episodes with Ricky Gervais, star of Netflix’s “After Life,” “Pose’s” Mj Rodriguez and more.