Charlie Cox on the return of Daredevil and why getting back into superhero shape was ‘so rough’
Charlie Cox was delighted as his star-making, superhero role in Daredevil was brought back, but that joy quickly turned to panic.
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When Charlie Cox’s Netflix series Daredevil was abruptly cancelled in 2018 after three successful series, he thought he’d reached “the end of the road” in the superhero world.
And it wasn’t just the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to continue playing a character he truly loved – the blind lawyer Matt Murdock who moonlighted as the masked vigilante Daredevil – although that was reason enough to make him sad.
The show had also given him a family – figuratively and literally. Over the course of five years and three seasons the cast and crew had all become tight, and it was also where he met his wife Samantha, with whom he has two children and recently returned from a family trip to Australia.
“It was awesome man,” he beams over Zoom call from New York, alongside Vincent D’Onofrio who plays his on-screen nemesis Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. “I had such a good time. My brother and his family they live in Perth … so we were there for Christmas. I took my family over there. We had a beautiful time. We got some sun, got some warm weather.”
Professionally speaking it also meant the end of a regular, high-profile gig, something that had largely eluded him since his breakthrough role in 2007 fantasy drama Stardust at a time he was kicking around Los Angeles and auditioning for roles alongside up-and-coming British compatriots including Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield, Eddie Redmayne and Robert Pattinson.
He had experienced disappointment before, like when his recurring role in Boardwalk Empire came to a bloody end stuffed into a crate, but the fact that the well-received, dark and violent Marvel comic superhero series became a victim of studio rights wrangling when Disney became the overlord of all things Marvel, was particularly hard to take when he felt he still had so much to give.
“It was sad and I’d loved playing in the character so much and I’d had the reason to believe we were going to keep going and then that didn’t happen,” Cox says. “I don’t want be too poor me. I was lucky enough to go on and do a film with James Marsh (The King of Thieves) and some theatre and stuff.
“That is the life of an actor. When I was killed off in Boardwalk Empire that was a phone call that changed my life in the space of about three minutes. So you get a little bit resilient to losing jobs or not getting jobs or whatever it is. But I was sad.”
Fast-forward more than six years and Cox is astonished, but delighted, to be making his return to headline a Daredevil series, this time integrated into the all-conquering Marvel Cinematic Universe. He first got wind of it when Marvel boss Kevin Feige called him in 2020 in the depths of the Covid pandemic to see if he’d be open to reprising his role as the so-called Man Without Fear, whose blinding as a child heightened all his other senses and gave him enhanced reactions, balance, speed and strength.
Cox responded with an enthusiastic yes and he was gradually eased into the wider superhero world, first with a small cameo as Peter Parker’s lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home and then a guest appearance in 2022’s She Hulk: Attorney at Law, having an oddly comic fling with the title character.
But Daredevil: Born Again marks his proper return to the fray alongside D’Onofrio as his arch-enemy and mirror image and has been set up as a continuation of the themes, story and tone of the first three Netflix series, but also designed to appeal to new viewers, with a second season shooting next month.
“If I am honest, I never really thought we’d be sat here how many years later talking about a new season,” marvels Cox. “I really thought that we’d come to the end of the road. So this is all gravy, man. I’m still pinching myself.”
But if the spirit was willing to return to the hard-hitting, bone-crunching action of Daredevil – the new series is darker and more violent than most of its MCU cousins – Cox soon found that the flesh was weaker than he might have hoped. He was in his early 30s when he first got ripped for the part – but how was it returning to peak physical strength and condition a decade later?
“I sense you know the answer to that question,” he laughs. “The first action sequence we did on this iteration, the next day I was like ‘huh, I don’t remember feeling quite so rough when we did this before’. The only thing I’ll say is I’ve had to incorporate a lot more stretching into my into my daily routine in order just to make it through a season.”
D’Onofrio, who tortured and tormented Cox’s Daredevil across the three Netflix seasons as ruthless and violent crime lord Wilson Fisk, was more upbeat than his co-star that they might once again get to resume hostilities together on screen and felt that the pair had “unfinished business”.
Like Cox, his character been eased into the wider MCU through appearances in the TV spin-offs Hawkeye and Echo, for D’Onofrio, this is the real deal.
“When I heard that we were going to do Born Again, that was the biggest thrill of all because that’s where our characters live best, in the tone that we’ve created in the Netflix show and then and were able to do again for this show.
“So the whole thing has been extremely exciting. I just love playing this character so much. It’s just endless what I can do with him, so it’s a thrill, you know.”
D’Onofrio’s Fisk ended the Netflix iteration of Daredevil by finally being jailed for his crimes, leaving his criminal empire to be run by his wife. Born Again begins with him being released from prison and running for Mayor of New York City, promising to clean the place up by any means necessary. But if a larger-than-life, ruthless American convicted felon running a divisive and populist campaign for high office sounds eerily familiar, D’Onofrio is quick to shut down any speculation that his take on the character, who has been around in the comic books for nearly 60 years, was inspired by real-world events.
“I would say it hasn’t,” he says firmly. “Folks need to remember that I created this character from the page before we were in any of this jam here in America that we’re in. I think of our show as what it is – a fantasy sci-fi and I don’t draw on anything that’s going on in the real world.
“We have these great scripts in front of us and we have to execute them and it takes a lot. I think I’ve created a character that I play just as that character. It’s very personal to me and not I’m not drawing from anything in the real world. Nothing at all. So, I’ve always approached it like that and I continue to do so.”
Daredevil: Born Again directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who had previously worked for Marvel on Moon Knight and the second season of Loki, came late to the project after a lighter approach that was less connected to the Netflix series was deemed was deemed not to be working. Benson says that both Cox and D’Onofrio, who by now know their characters better than anyone, were vital in helping them get up to speed with the dark and gritty world of New York crime and politics that they had been tasked with bringing to life.
“It’s fascinating to every day watch actors who have played the same character for over 10 years because there’s a fluidity to it,” Benson says. “There’s a nuance to it. This isn’t an opening night, this is Cats and they have been going for 15 years. They know it so well that it’s like watching two people get possessed by this character that you love on the show.
“The other thing that I we don’t we talked about a whole lot is their own obsession with the show and the story. Every actor loves their role and we never worked with an actor who wasn’t so grateful to have the opportunity they had whatever job we were on. But these guys, they love the show. They love these characters.”
Where the show and its street-level characters fit into the ever-expanding MCU remains to be seen, especially with a couple more Avengers movies deep in production. It’s hard to see someone like Daredevil – or Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, who also is resurrected from his Netflix series for Born Again – venturing to distant planets or facing off against a rampaging Hulk or the Mighty Thor without being squashed like a bug. But executive producer and head of streaming, television and animation at Marvel Studios, Brad Winderbaum, says it’s not about that.
“I don’t think you need the Hulk or Iron Man or Thor to show up to tell the story,” he says. “And certainly why I love reading the Daredevil comic book was not to see cosmic storytelling, but was to see this grounded New York storytelling play out on the page.
“So that’s something that this show does very well. Yes, it exists in the shared universe of these other characters, but that’s not the driver. The driver is the parallel between these two men and how it plays out in the streets of New York.”
Daredevil: Born Again streams on Disney+ from March 5.
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