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'Playing Characters Like This Is Why I Do What I Do': Tim Blake Nelson On 'Watchmen' & 'Just Mercy'

(CBS Local)-- Tim Blake Nelson is one of the best characters in Hollywood today.

The Juilliard School graduate and New York resident has had a busy year with roles in the HBO series "Watchmen" with Regina King, the movie "Just Mercy" starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx and "The Report" with Adam Driver.

Nelson was recently nominated for a Critic's Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor In A Drama Series for Watchmen and he says all the credit goes to the people he's collaborated with on the project.

"Damon Lindelof is one of the greatest storytellers out there on any screen medium, be it television or film," said Nelson in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "Just getting to be a color in his palette while he paints in his fresco painting way has been an incredible honor. He wrote a wonderful character that I was chosen to play. In his Lindelophian way, he has allowed me to collaborate on who or what that character is. I did some good diligent work figuring out who this character was and how best to embody him."

After years in the business, Nelson has changed the way he prepares for a role. In the past he thought he could work on impulse and intuition, but now Nelson is very intentional about getting to a production site early to learn about his character. He got the chance to dig deep for his new movie "Just Mercy" where he plays a really complicated man named Ralph Myers.

"There is a ton going on in this movie. It's my second time working with Michael B. Jordan," said Nelson. "Like Regina [King], Michael is so classy. He is a great human being and I felt that on Fantastic Four. He was preparing to do Creed and he would try to get me to train with him every day. I got to play this wildly eccentric, marginalized, wounded, tragic character named Ralph Myers. It was a role with its own special demands. It sounds odd to say it, but getting to play characters like this is why I do what I do."

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