But that was not showrunner Damon Lindelof’s original plan. Nelson told EW Live that he had been given a completely different backstory for the character, and one that only changed after the first three episodes had already been filmed. “I had been operating under different assumptions about why he was a detective and what his story was,” says Nelson. “And based on the first three episodes, Damon and the writers changed their mind about what originally they envisioned for the reveal of who Wade was in episode 5.”
So what was the original backstory? “The backstory was entirely different,” Nelson says. “And I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it involved an interracial relationship that Wade had had that had ended very badly. And I loved that notion. I’m in an interracial marriage myself in my own real life and have three children in that marriage, and so these are issues that are very close to me. And although my interracial marriage has a very happy present — and, I think, future and past — Wade’s was really tragic and really dark and really just changed the course of his life.”
Considering the prevalent issue of race all over the series — the very first scene was set in the Tula race massacre of 1921 — it is no surprise that Wade’s original backstory was tied into that theme with an interracial relationship. But then Lindelof had other ideas. “Damon changed his mind about that and instead put Wade’s sexual awakening back at the time of the squid attack in 1985 in the original Watchmennovel,” says Nelson. “I think that was a better decision for the show as a whole and really smart writing.”
Nelson also gives his showrunner credit for crafting a new story that did not contradict any of the actors’ choices in the first three episodes. “Very much to Damon’s credit, even though I had been operating with this completely different backstory, it didn’t really change any of the macro decisions I had made about Wade,” says Nelson. “And so it was perfectly coherent with every decision I had made in the past, and I don’t credit myself with that. I credit the fact that Damon and the writers, that even though they were going to change the backstory so dramatically, they were going to do it in a way that they wouldn’t screw their actor over and make the decisions I made suddenly incoherent. And they didn’t do that. And I was just very, very excited to play this new story in a way that wasn’t going to contravene anything I had done before.”
