DAREDEVIL’S Charlie Cox Talks Blood, Sweat and Tears … And Season 3

By Abbey White and Marcus Daniels

Season two of Netflix’s fan favorite series Daredevil redefined the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The even bloodier, moodier and darker follow up to the first season of the Marvel universe hit saw the “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” grappling with how to be the hero his city needed. Following Daredevil’s removal of Wilson Fisk at the end of season one, Hell’s Kitchen’s criminal underbelly literally exploded.

As we learned, Fisk’s sordid nature was a rare kind of nightmare that not only struck fear into the hearts of innocents, but into the borough’s bad guys. With his lording presence gone, Daredevil was forced to face even more enemies and a particularly complicated foil in the form of The Punisher. Meanwhile, Murdock had to deal with how Daredevil was sinking his professional life and aiding in the destruction of his personal one. Compounded, all of this pushed Matt to his physical, psychological, emotional and moral limits, making the man who couldn’t kill question the effectiveness of his heroic code.

While season three won’t hit Netflix until next year, fans are already itching to get their hands on details about the upcoming storyline. Marvel is notorious for keeping its plots on lockdown, but during his appearance at DragonCon, Daredevil star Charlie Cox opened up about what he liked between season one and two, what it was like preparing to be our favorite vigilante, and where he personally wants season three to take the “only Marvel hero he’d ever want to portray.”

On how ready he was for the show’s fight sequences:

“So, I don’t know names of what I’m doing. There are certain things that I know, but this character has so much stuff to learn. So much stuff to practice on a daily basis. I’m acting vision impaired, doing an accent, learning and remembering the lines, doing so much that I let the stunt coordinator teach me the routines. But I’m not learning individual art forms. I just know that in terms of what we talked about at the beginning of the show that Matt has probably experimented with different types of Martial Arts. It’s all kind of a mish-mash of whatever seems appropriate in the moment. Occassionaly they tell me what’s what. There’s a scene in season two where Matt is having kind of a sexy fight scene with Elektra in the boxing ring. He does a few moves and she says ‘Ah Muay Thai.’ And so I was like ‘Oh yes Muay Thai.’”

“In terms of the training, we don’t have much time. The stunt team learn the sequences, they write them and they learn them over the course of a week and then I come in — I’m filming the rest of the time — so I come in the day before and learn sections of it at a time. I’m quite lucky I did fight training in drama school so I can pick up seven to ten moves at a time. So we learn then shoot that, then forget it and move on to the next section. In the end they look at it and try and figure out if mine’s good enough to use. If not, they’ve got the stunt double.”

On the mystical elements being brought into the realism of Daredevil’s universe:

“That was tricky. Obviously I don’t know what they’re writing and I didn’t see [The Hand] coming just because season one was so grounded. At the time, I kind’ve had mixed feelings about it. I wasn’t sure because I loved that the first season was basically a crime drama and the superhero element was the cherry on top. But the show didn’t survive because it had a superhero in it. It survived because it had a good story — good writing, good characters. So the superhero element was a bonus. I really admired what they had done with that, but going into season two, I understand the need to do it because we’re gearing up for The Defenders and Iron Fist is going to be in The Defenders. Iron Fist has a lot of mythology in it and so you kind of have to guide it, have to tie in those worlds. So Daredevil season two was a good opportunity to do that.”

On a “moving” scene with The Punisher in season two that was actually unintentional:

“When we were filming episode six, one of the producer’s came up to me and said ‘You’re amazing in that scene.’ And I was like ‘Uhh… I’m not really speaking in that scene. That scene’s about him.’ But there’s a moment where [The Punisher] is describing his family and there’s this tear that comes out of my mask and it’s so beautiful. I remember thinking ‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t cry in that scene. That’s not right. That’s weird. I think I would remember that, you know what I mean? Anyway, when I watched it I remembered in the beginning of the scene I had to literally carry John up a hill. So that’s sweat coming out of my mask. I was like ‘I’ll take it. That’s a free tear.’”

On how he started to “sound like Batman”:

“The way he was written — this wasn’t me this was in the writing — was in short, sharp sentences. He’d say things like ‘Give me a name,’ ‘Who are you?’ Three or four words at a time. And all of them kind of interrogative sentences. Aggressive phrases. I really didn’t try to do it differently, I just — there’s really only one way that kind of acting can come out of you. The problem was, the producers would say ‘You’re starting to sound like Batman.’ I really wasn’t attempting to do that, but I understand how easy it is to do that. It’s very hard to say things ‘Give me a name’ in a threatening and aggressive fashion in a normal voice. It didn’t sound right to me. So that was a constant issue, trying to make it sound like Matt, but also do the job within the scene which is to force the person that you’re holding by the collar to tell you what you want to know.”

On how he prepared to play being blind:

“I got the job a month before we started shooting and since then it has been an ongoing process. I can’t read braille. Of all the things I did try and learn in order to play the role, I thought braille was one I could probably get away with not doing. But I did learn how to read braille, if that makes sense. I know how it is actually read and what the hand looks like. It was fun to come up with a way for Matt to read braille in front of Karen and people who don’t that he’s [blind]. And then there are these little moments in the first season and second season that you get to see Matt read braille by himself, which of course is a very different thing because he has superhuman touch.”

“But early on I was in touch with a man who’s been legally blind for twenty years and I spent a huge amount of time with him before we started filming. He was on set during the first season. We’d walk down the streets together, I was blindfolded and he had his cane. I joked that it was literally a case of the blind leading the blind. I filmed him a great deal, had him make tea and all that, filmed him doing day to day stuff. Had little conversations with him and filmed his eyes. Just trying to make it as realistic as possible. And then I had to learn from the comics how Matt operated when he was by himself or when he’s with someone who knows about him.”

“There was a scene in the very first episode of season two where Matt and Karen are playing pool and there’s a trick shot in that scene. It was really hard, I had to practice a lot. It’s one thing to do a trick shot, it’s another to do it while you’re not looking at the ball that’s there. I think I got it in the first take and then I was like ‘I can do it better.’ Eight takes later I just gave up. [Laughs]”

On what he likes about working in the bigger Marvel universe:

“One of the things I love about what that they’ve done with these shows — and I mean the Daredevil show, Jessica Jones and the upcoming Luke Cage and Iron Fist — is Rosario Dawson’s character Claire Temple. She’s wonderful in the role and the way they pepper her throughout all the shows, she’s almost like — at this moment she’s a through line that connects our shows. And I love that stuff. One of my favorite moments in season two was a scene I had with Rosario and our characters hadn’t seen each other for a while. She had a cut on her face and I said to her, ‘What’s that?’ And apparently the reason that she got it, what she told me was that in Luke Cage’s show, a few days before she had a cut on her head and that had to be consistent with our show. I think that stuff is so cool. I love Jessica Jones and I’m really excited about Luke Cage. I feel like [Luke Cage] is going to be a show that people remember for decades. It’s going to be really culturally interesting and some really cool music I hear in that show.”

On where he imagines Matt’s season three journey will take him personally and in terms of the Defenders:

“One of the things I loved about the way season two ended was that Matt kind of fails, or doesn’t succeed in what he’s intended to do. Everything kind of falls apart and he’s left on the rooftop iconically holding Elektra. So I’m presuming, and I have no idea because I haven’t read any of the scripts, but I imagine that it’s about what that’s done to him emotionally. It’s about how beaten down he is psychologically that will lead him into a place where he’s willing and able to accept help. That help may come in the form of a detective, I assume. I’m really excited to find out what that dynamic is going to be like. I love Jessica Jones and I can’t wait to do scenes with Kristen Ritter. Obviously I can’t wait to see what all of that will be. There’s a really great scene from the comics with DD and Luke sitting on a wall eating cheeseburgers. I really want to get that in somehow.”

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