Daredevil: Born Again stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio talk their big MCU comeback in Disney’s most brutal Marvel show yet

He may look like the big red baddie downstairs, but Daredevil’s resurrection is a miracle of heavenly proportions.

Returning to our screens seven years after Netflix pulled the plug on the original Daredevil TV show, this week sees Daredevil: Born Again hit the Disney+ streaming service. And despite now living in the House of Mouse, the Man Without Fear is back at his baddie-bashing, bone-crunching best.

The darkest, most brutal superhero TV show Disney has ever put out, it once again follows lawyer-turned-super-sensing-vigilante Matt Murdoch, aka Daredevil, as he battles the criminal empire of Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, whose underworld power has grown to a terrifying size. It’s season four of the beloved original show in all but name.

Charlie Cox is back in the horned cowl, while the imposing presence of the Kingpin is again carried masterfully by Vincent D’Onofrio. Here, both stars talk reigniting the spark in Marvel’s Hell’s Kitchen, and their hopes for the future of the franchise in its new Disney home.

Does Daredevil: Born Again feel like getting the old band back together?

Charlie Cox: It does. That was all very special. When we were cancelled in 2018, they had just pitched me the new season – what the story was going to be – and I just assumed we would be shooting on the same schedule. We never really had our moment to say goodbye and close the chapter. It was very emotional, after so many years, to be back and talking about the past and all of those things.

Would you say it feels like a season four?

CC: It does. But there was a U-turn after the strike, where we were headed in one direction which was interesting and valid. The argument was, if we’re coming back after all these years, we don’t want to just do exactly the same thing.

Marvel looked at the episodes and knew it wasn’t quite working. We shot a whole new pilot and they reorganised what we had filmed to make it feel more like the show we had shot all those years previously. Given what a Herculean task that was, it’s very impressive what they achieved.

• 9 things to know about Daredevil: Born Again, according to show runner Dario Scardapane

Do you think the vision for this show became clearer following the creative overhaul?

Vincent D’Onofrio: I felt the character [of Kingpin] lives best in a down-to-earth, gritty world, darker story. There are things in this new series that Charlie and I weren’t even sure were going to make the cut, but they did. We went really dark at times. [With the first version of the show], Charlie and I were saying, “We’re not doing it right yet. We need to start again.” We pushed for that. And we were lucky that these guys who run Marvel supported us.

Charlie, You previously said, “If we’re going to do it, it has to feel different!”

CC: We had to honour certain things about the [original] show, certain tonal aspects, which wasn’t being done. For example, it wasn’t very dark and it is now. At times, it’s incredibly sinister, incredibly brutal. These characters work best when they live in that world.

But it doesn’t feel like exactly the same. The pacing is different. The identity has shifted. It’s six years later. The kind of shows that people watch on television, they influence how you make a TV show.

Were you surprised it wasn’t Disney-fied?

CC: I was hugely shocked. I expected it to be dumbed down quite a lot, and that has not been the case at all. In fact, there are a couple of scenes that I find difficult to watch, and I don’t remember feeling that way previously. There was nothing I couldn’t stomach but there are two scenes this season that I’m like, “Oh god, brutal!”

Where do we find Matt at the beginning of this season?

CC: The reason it feels like a hybrid of a season four and a season one is because enough time has passed where you can allow for enough of a reset and things don’t need to be explicitly on camera. Matt has come to the realisation that maybe he underestimates collateral damage, and despite all the good he’s been trying to do, how much has it actually worked? How much has just spawned more problems?

Maybe he needs to put more of his energy into the work he does with the lawyer and helping people out in a legal way. There’s a scene where he meets with Kingpin and they say, “You stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours, we won’t have any problems.” The rest of the season is a collision course between those two people pushing boundaries and forcing each other to cross lines they don’t want to cross.

Fisk is reaching for power this season. Is this the most dangerous we’ve seen him?

V D’O: He is becoming increasingly dangerous, and I think he is flexing his darkness and his power, and he’s trying to basically gaslight a city, and then eventually a country, and then eventually a world. That’s the way he thinks and there’s no stopping him.

The most fun for me is to play the character in the darkest way possible. He believes that his word is gospel, and he’s just putting up with everybody else. He’s truly broken. But he believes that being who he is, through and through, is the only way to succeed. They called him Kingpin for a reason: he really does behave like a king.

What does he do this season that we haven’t seen him do before?

V D’O: It’s something that’s common in the comics, especially from [Frank] Miller forward: he’s testing himself. You’re going to see him volunteering himself to be in situations that he may or may not be able to handle, and just because of his dark side, he moves forward through it. I am very familiar with playing this character, but he changes scene by scene. It’s interesting to put this character in any circumstance and see what will happen. He can’t help but be him.

Who does Matt have the most interesting relationship with this season, other than Kingpin?

CC: The relationship between Matt and Karen is very different. A new relationship, which was really fun, was with this character, Heather Glenn, played by Margarita Levieva. Matt finds himself in a new and healthy relationship. What they discover about each other is that they have very different views about the role of a superhero, a masked vigilante, and that leads to some poignant conversations.

Vincent, how have the events of Hawkeye and Echo affected Kingpin?

V D’O: They were kind of different iterations of the Fisk from the original show. My job is to service the story. Hawkeye was one style of show, very far away from the Netflix series, and the way Fisk was written itself – which was really good – was a completely different world. When I did Echo, they leaned into the grittiness, but when it came to Fisk, it still was not quite the original thing. We’ve had the chance now to do it the way we wanted to do it.

Does it feel like the new show is part of the wider MCU?

CC: I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’m too close to it. We have a couple of fun cameos, and I’ve been in Spider-Man and She-Hulk. We’re in a larger universe, but the show does often feel like we are down and dirty in the grimy streets of New York. Sometimes it feels a bit claustrophobic and isolated in that regard.

How has the physicality of the Kingpin role changed, Vincent, as you’re wearing a fat suit now rather than putting on weight?

V D’O: It helps. I kept that weight on for so long for the Netflix series, because we would wait so long between seasons. After Thor gained weight on screen, they got better with the suits and prosthetics. I was very happy about that. I had most of the weight still on in Hawkeye, but I started to wear a suit. Then in Echo, I was going back towards my normal weight and wore a suit that I wore in this one.

We did other little things to sell the size of him but we’re going further. The size he ends up at the end of the first season, he’ll stay that way, but we’re doing some things in this new season we’re about to shoot that require his size to be more specific and more detailed.

How long could you play these characters, do you think?

V D’O: It’s so fun. I can’t wait to see what more they’re going to do with him. It’s up to Marvel whether they’ll have me or not. This character that Marvel came up with is so amazing. I don’t feel like it will stop. As far as movies and stuff like that, I only hope that will happen. But when it comes to that, Charlie and I, we are the last ones to find out what’s going to happen. I’ll continue as long as they’ll have me.

CC: I feel rejuvenated and lucky and blessed that I’m still being given the opportunity to play this character. You so rarely get to do such a varied palette of tasks as an actor. I get all of this cool stuff as a lawyer, I get emotional scenes with various love interests, and then I get to wear an awesome superhero costume and jump off rooftops. I love all of it.

Normally, when you go into your tenth year playing a character, you’re winding down, but we’re going the other way. It would be interesting to know what gives up first, Marvel’s faith in us or our bodies!

It would be cool to see Daredevil leading the Avengers!

CC: That would be awesome.

Daredevil: Born Again streams exclusively from March 5th on Disney+

• This article is adapted from SFX, issue 388 the world's number one sci-fi, fantasy and horror magazine. Additional words by Gerald Lynch.

Main Image Credit: Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images