Watchmen: Reflecting on Regina King’s game-changing performance

With her performance in Watchmen, Regina King represented women and black culture to the highest order.

Watchmen was a fantastic show, like many of the comic book programs that have been premiering, However, it was a different kind of show, as it didn’t focus solely on people with superpowers. While heroes were an integral part of the show, they weren’t the biggest part. Most of the show focused on things that affect Black Americans in the United States. The tone was set immediately with the horrendous massacre on  Black Wall Street. The visual of all those innocent people dying for nothing was horrific. That scene alone gave viewers an idea of what they were getting into. Watchmen also went through the racist periods of American history before Jim Crow was abolished. But as incredible and groundbreaking as the show was, it couldn’t have been done without the awe-inspiring performance of Regina King.

King has been acting longer than a lot of our readers have been alive. She started her acting career in 1985 in the popular NBC sitcom 227. To many of her fans, she’s best known for voicing Huey and Riley Freeman in The Boondocks as well as co-starring in Boyz n the Hood and Friday. In 2019, King won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in If Beale Street Could Talk. She’s also been praised for her performances in Seven Seconds and American Crime. With all of this, we shouldn’t have been shocked by how great she was in Watchmen. Nonetheless, she may have given the best performance we’ve seen in a comic book show, and it’s definitely one of the best performances of 2019.