'Daredevil: Born Again' stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio tease action-packed series: 'Fans will be pleased'

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Charlie Cox is probably not the first Marvel actor to complain about sore muscles. But after10 years of playing the Man Without Fear, things tend to get a little difficult.

Especially when he’s tasked with repeatedly performing bruising stunts and endlessly rehearsing one-take action scenes seven years after the last time he suited up as the blind superhero Daredevil.

“It does take its toll on your body,” Cox, 42, says chuckling in a Zoom interview from New York City. “Particularly when you’re a decade older than when you first started.”

This week Cox returns as blind, justice-obsessed lawyer Matt Murdock alongside Vincent D’Onofrio’s fearsome crime boss Wilson Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again, a revamp of the series that ran for three seasons in the mid-2010s on Netflix.

The new update finds the two antagonists on a collision course as Fisk, aka Kingpin, campaigns to become the mayor of New York City while a super-powered serial killer known as the Muse threatens the city’s citizens.

After Netflix cancelled the original Daredevil run in 2018, Cox reprised the character with bit parts in Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk. Meanwhile, D’Onofrio revived Kingpin in Hawkeye and Echo. But all along, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continued to build out a storytelling slate that includes 35 feature films and more than 25 TV shows, fans — along with its stars — clamoured for Daredevil’s return.

Now, after several fits and starts that included a complete creative overhaul, Daredevil has once again risen from the ashes.

One of the hallmarks of the early show was its embrace of bone-crunching action and dark subject matter.

Cox says new showrunner Dario Scardapane (The Punisher, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have retained what audiences loved most about the first iteration while upping the ante for the new sequel series hitting Disney+ this week.

Philip Silvera, who acted as stunt and fight coordinator on the Netflix version of Daredevil, returns for the reboot.

“So, we have the opportunity to pick up where we left,” the British-born actor says. “I’ve seen the sequences this season and I’m so proud of them. They’re inventive and also reminiscent of the previous show.”

D’Onofrio, 65, wasn’t sure he’d ever get a chance to play Kingpin again, but seated next to Cox, he says he’s thrilled to be back because the Marvel villain is more intense this time.

“He’s on a path now where he’s craving more power and he’s dangerous when that craving starts within him,” D’Onofrio says.

Not only are Cox and D’Onofrio reprising their earlier roles, but Jon Bernthal is back as the vigilante known as The Punisher. Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson also return as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson.

The first time around, Daredevil became known for its famous one-take fight sequences. In Season 1 and 2, Murdock battled a group of baddies in a pair of hallway dust-ups. In Season 3, filmmakers upped the action with a much-talked about 11-minute sequence that saw Murdock fighting his way through a prison after he’s marked for death.

Cox says the new slate of episodes will have sequences that will match any of the other previous action scenes. 

“We’re always trying to one-up ourselves,” he says. “So, it’s such a pleasure to work with the stunt coordinators to see what they come up with. It’s very important in our show that the (action) is treated like acting scenes. There’s an emotion behind every punch and every kick, and there’s a reason for all the violence.”

Cox says fans of the one-take fight scenes will not be disappointed with what Silvera and his team have dreamt up this season and they won’t dial back the bloodiness in a bid to reach a bigger audience now that the show is streaming on Disney+.

“It’s going to go further than we went before. It was one of the things that was clear from the beginning for fans of this show that they wanted it to maintain its integrity in terms of how sinister and gritty it was,” Cox says.

Created in the 1960s by the late writer Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett, the book’s crime-ridden New York streets took an even darker turn when the character was reimagined by comic book writer and artist Frank Miller in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Netflix show took its cues from this interpretation and this new revival will lean even more heavily to Miller’s uncompromising vision.

“I think on the page, in the comics, this character lends itself well to an R-rated show. Some of the best Daredevil runs are the ones that are on the darker side. So huge credit to Marvel and Disney+ for letting us continue in that vein,” Cox says.

With filming on a second season getting underway this month, Cox wonders aloud if they pushed the envelope too far in this nine-episode arc.

“Vince and I were just talking about how there are a couple of scenes in this new show which even we find hard to watch,” he says, glancing at his co-star.

But he’s not going to let that thought linger for any length of time.

“I think a lot of the fans are going to be really pleased,” he says.

Daredevil: Born Again’s two-episode series premiere hits Disney+ today. New episodes stream weekly.

mdaniell@postmedia.com