Charlie Cox is giving credit where credit is due, saying he and Daredevil: Born Again co-star Vincent D’Onofrio are “indebted” to Marvel for listening to the duo’s creative input ahead of the show’s Season 1 launch.
Post 2023 WGA strike, it was well-documented that Disney+‘s revival of the beloved anti-hero underwent an overhaul following a determination the project wasn’t working. In a new interview with Josh Horowitz for his Happy Sad Confused podcast, Cox reflected on what happened.
“It’s an odd one to talk about, and I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes,” he recalled, noting there was an “admirable effort” to approach the material differently than what had been portrayed in the three-season Netflix show.
The actor said there was an assumption that the old network model of television would “die a death, they’re dinosaurs, they’re not going to last,” but the reality is that “people love those shows. They’re incredibly addictive; they’re really easy to watch; they’re very, very well written. It’s very difficult to write a well-written procedural.”
“Kevin has actually since told me that they were looking at that model and saying, ‘We would like to have that kind of show on a streaming platform, on Disney+,’” Cox continued. The natural path was focusing on a “lawyer who’s already popular” — enter: Matt Murdock, esquire by day and vigilante by night.
“Once we got into production, it very quickly became apparent that the lessons we’d learnt from the [Ben Affleck] movie that we had got right in the show, we were now almost unlearning a little bit,” Cox explained, “and that the character really does work best in a serialized platform, but also when it’s darker and grittier and there’s less tongue-in-cheek levity.”
Cox concluded, “Huge credit to Marvel and those guys ’cause it takes a huge amount of courage and money to make a U-turn like that. We’re indebted to them, and they really did listen to Vincent and I.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cox remained mum about Season 3, which is currently shooting, and played coy about a forthcoming Defenders reunion.
“I start off with a beard,” he previewed of the new installment before adding that he “can’t say anything. I’m always terrified of that question.”
As for whether we can expect future crossovers à la Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Cox noted, “Marvel have kind of been clear with me, for now at least, that I’m focusing on the show.”
Watch the full interview below:
