‘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.