Jeffrey Dean Morgan learns to like dark ‘Comedian’ in ‘Watchmen’

MATTHEW GOODE as Ozymandias and JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN as The Comedian in Warner Bros. PicturesÕ, Paramount PicturesÕ and Legendary PicturesÕ action adventure ÒWatchmen,Ó distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – After playing a patient in need of a heart transplant in “Grey’s Anatomy,” Jeffrey Dean Morgan said he needed some bulking up to play the part of the nihilistic superhero the Comedian in “Watchmen.”

“I did two months of training just for the opening sequence, that opening fight training,” Morgan said at the press junket for “Watchmen. “It was great; it was a lot of work. I hadn’t done anything physical, I’d been lying in bed for the last two years on a TV show, so atrophy had set in.”

Morgan said the hard work was all worth it.

“When you see the final product, obviously I was duly impressed with myself,” he said, laughing. “It all paid off.”

Morgan said he was unfamiliar with “Watchmen” prior to being approached for the film, and hadn’t grown up with comics and graphic novels. In the “Watchmen” graphic novel, it’s the Comedian’s murder that sets the plot in motion, and his connections with the other characters in the film are explored via flashbacks. Morgan was sent a copy of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons graphic novel to see if he’d be interested in the part of the Comedian.