With Daredevil out now, let’s take a look at 15 things you probably didn’t know about
Marvel’s TV series about a blind lawyer who’s also a masked vigilante.
When Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment, Joe Quesada saw Charlie Cox on crime drama
Boardwalk Empire, he knew he’d found the perfect actor to play Matt Murdock, and he
rang Marvel’s Head of TV, Jeph Loeb, to tell him just that.
At that point, the on-screen rights to Daredevil were still owned by Fox.
It was roughly two years later that those rights reverted to Marvel Studios in late
2012!
When Charlie Cox first auditioned for Daredevil in New York, the mock scenes he read weren’t
from the actual script, and his character’s name was Alex Everett, not Matt Murdock.
The name Alex Everett was perhaps a nod to Daredevil co-creator Bill Everett, and to
one of Daredevil’s comic book artists, Alex Maleev.
Of course, Cox wasn’t the only actor up for the role. In fact, later when he had a
Skype meeting with the show’s exec producer Jeph Loeb, he could actually see photos on
the wall behind Loeb of other actors who were up for consideration! However, according to
Cox, he couldn’t quite make out their faces!
The comic book version of Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, is bald, 6 foot 7 inches tall, and
weighs 450 pounds. So, Vincent D’Onofrio, who’s 6 foot 3
inches tall, shaved his head and gained 30 pounds to play him, taking his total weight
to about 280 pounds. Of course, this isn’t the first time D’Onofrio’s
gained considerable weight or shaved his head for a role.
To play Private Leonard Lawrence in Stanley Kubrick’s war film Full Metal Jacket, D’Onofrio
shaved his head and gained nearly 70 pounds.
In addition to the show’s scripts, D’Onofrio found inspiration for his portrayal of Fisk
in the work of Daredevil comic book artists and writers David Mack, Bill Sienkiewicz,
and Frank Miller.
At the end of Charlie Cox’s first day on the Daredevil set, Joe Quesada gave the actor
some of his artwork as a welcoming present. The work was page 1 issue 1 of the mini-series
Daredevil: Father, which was both written and illustrated by Quesada.
And it was actually one of the few pages Quesada had kept from that series.
Elden Henson, who plays Matt Murdock’s best friend Foggy Nelson, auditioned for Daredevil
via Skype while he was in Berlin filming The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.
According to Henson, the audition was a bit of a nightmare as he couldn’t get Skype
to work on his laptop, and when he tried to Skype on his phone, there were problems with
the sound and people kept calling him! Straight after finishing Mockingjay in Germany,
Henson travelled back to LA where his son was born the next day, and he arrived in New
York less than two weeks later to start work on Daredevil.
Deborah Ann Woll had less than 48 hours between wrapping the last episode of vampire drama
True Blood and her first day filming Daredevil. Woll, who plays client-turned-secretary Karen
Page in the Marvel series, says the short turnaround helped take her mind off the sadness
of True Blood ending.
Playing Karen Page in Daredevil had a special, personal connection for Deborah Ann Woll,
as her real-life boyfriend EJ Scott suffers from Choroideremia, a rare inherited degenerative
disease that leads to blindness.
Writer Frank Miller and artist John Romita Jr’s 1993 Daredevil comic book mini-series,
The Man Without Fear, was a big influence on Marvel’s Daredevil show.
An example of that can be seen in the black ninja costume Daredevil wears in the series.
Costume designer Stephanie Maslansky wanted the costume to be as grounded and authentic
as possible, and said, “It needed to be made of things that anyone could buy on the
street, on the Internet or in an army-navy store. We wanted something that looked militaristic
and functional, but also dramatic and […] bad-ass.”
Before he joined the show, Charlie Cox wasn’t familiar with the Daredevil comics.
In fact, the only comics he read when he was growing up in the UK were The Beano and The
Dandy! But once cast, he spent a lot of time reading
the Daredevil comics and, because of the tone of Marvel’s TV series, he found the work
of writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Alex Maleev particularly useful.
Cox has said that if he could choose any supervillains to appear in future seasons of the show, he’d
love to see Stilt-Man and the Jester; and he’d also like to see his character fight crime
alongside Black Widow.
Although Daredevil is set in modern-day Hell’s Kitchen, the show’s creative team wanted
their version of the New York neighbourhood to be more like the grittier place seen in
the comic books, and less like the gentrified location it is now in reality.
So, executive producer Drew Goddard came up with the idea that, in Daredevil, New York
City is still dealing with the aftermath of the Battle of New York that took place in
the first Avengers movie. And that’s why, in the show, Hell’s Kitchen
has been partly destroyed and is being rebuilt, a plot point which brings Marvel’s big-screen
and small-screen worlds together.
Charlie Cox had about a month to prepare before shooting Daredevil.
Part of his prep included hitting the gym to bulk up and gain muscle so he could look
and act the part. Cox also worked with his stunt double Chris
Brewster and the show’s stunt co-ordinator Philip J Silvera on martial arts and boxing
techniques including kicks, punches, and poses. According to Cox, filming the stunt scenes
was one of his favourite parts of the show, and he was keen to do as much of it himself
as possible. To help Cox master the routines he was allowed
to do, the fight sequences were broken down into sets of 6 to 10 moves at a time, which
the actor usually learned on the day of filming. Cox’s stunt double Chris Brewster has said
that the action in Daredevil surpasses any TV show or film he’s worked on, which is
quite something because while big action movies may shoot for many months, Daredevil filmed
each episode in nine days.
To further prepare for the show, Cox also worked with Joe Strechay, who’s blind and
works at the American Foundation for the Blind where he helps prepare visually impaired people
for employment. During his time with Strechay, Cox learned
how to use a white cane and navigate busy sidewalks while wearing a blindfold.
And he also learned how a blind person would find objects on a table by feeling for them.
In fact, locating an object without using his eyesight was something Cox found quite
difficult during filming, which meant quite a few retakes to get it right!
To find out how his eyes should appear when he takes off his glasses or mask, Cox filmed
some of his conversations with Strechay. By filming him, Cox noticed how Strechay’s
eyes were often directed towards the mouth of whoever was speaking.
So, Cox did the same with Matt Murdock in Daredevil.
The creative team behind Daredevil approached the series as a crime drama first, and a superhero
show second. With that in mind, they took inspiration from
HBO crime drama The Wire as well as 1970s American movies including William Friedkin’s
The French Connection, Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, Francis Ford Coppola’s The
Conversation, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
Well there you have it, 15 things you probably didn't know about Daredevil!
Now, let me know in the comments below, what do you think of Marvel’s Daredevil series
on Netflix? And what would you like to see happen in future
seasons? If you enjoyed this video, hit the thumbs-up
button and subscribe for more things you didn't know, as well as movie reviews and interviews.
Thanks for watching! Yippee-ki-yay, superhero lovers!