Friends, this is my very last of this year’s TCA conference posts for Netflix, but I’ve saved a near n’ dear one for the finale. As a member of Netflix’s Stream Team, I got to sit in an interview for Marvel’s Daredevil, and hoo boy, the stuff I now know! (FYI, Season Two begins streaming on March 18th. I sure as heck know where I’ll be. Daredevil needs me, you guys.)
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Here’s the premise of Marvel’s Daredevil in a nutshell (a very emotionally fraught, super secretive and layered nutshell): Lawyer Matt Murdock was blinded as a boy, and uses his ridiculously heightened senses to fight crime by night. He’s not your average vigilante, however, and is driven by an incredibly strong moral compass. Oh, and his very best friend in the world just found out who he really is. Oh, and it’s causing a bit of strain on their friendship. (Oh, and at the end of Season One, Murdock-as-Daredevil has successfully put Wilson Fisk/Kingpin behind bars, alienated the one potentially true n’ pure love of his life, and the rift with his former best friend is causing some tension between the pal and the pal’s love interest, who- ha ha– also happens to be Murdock’s Gal Friday.)
WHO’S WITH ME?
Great, because there’s a whole heck of a lot more comin’. (Namely, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/The Punisher and Elodie Yung as Elektra. The addition of whom stirred up the interwebs to begin pinging questions like, “Will there be costumes?” Because, as everybody and their nerdy little brother knows, serious comic book fans have Serious Questions Concerning Accurate Costuming.)
Elodie Yung as Elektra (credit: Patrick Harbron/Netflix)
While Season One was all about, according to the creative time, “here’s this hero,” Season Two begins with the question, “…now what do you do with that?”
On Elektra:
Elodie Yung (Elektra): There’s definitely a costume.
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Doug Petrie (Daredevil’s co-executive producer): I think, what we were thinking – first and foremost – were two questions. One was what looks cool? How much do we love the comics and can we do that? And, then also, in terms of bringing Elodie in and her martial arts training – which is so evident in what she does and who she is as a character – what would you really fight in? What would protect you? And, also Elektra isn’t just about protection. She’s a little bit of a stylist, so we threw all that into the mix.
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EY: We think Elektra is, kind of, a sociopath, you know?
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EY: This world is a game for me – it’s like a chess game – and what motivates her is what she wants. She will use anything she needs to use to get to her goal and if she needs to kill people, she would, you know? She has this coldness and this sociopath in her and I tried to keep that, really. …On the other hand, we wanted to create a character with different layers and, I think, Elektra isn’t a bad person, she’s not a good person. She’s a person with different traits, with layers and she’s seeking for who she is, so really, in this season, there’s an arch to her story and, hopefully, she will find out who she is really by the end of it.
On Daredevil’s inner struggle- and what keeps him grounded:
Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil): …Now that he’s so much more visible, he’s a symbol, he’s recognizable…I think that informs his actions. And I think that has to inform the decisions that he makes. He can’t be as anonymous as he was in the first season. I think he has to be more responsible.
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“Season two begins with Wilson Fisk in jail, and the crime rate has plummeted- he’s looking after his town, Hell’s Kitchen- and things have kind of returned to normal. And with the emergence of Frank Castle, [and] having reconciled most of those inner demons, if you like, he’s then presented with someone who forces Matt to re-question everything he is. Because if people are going to draw parallels between him and Frank Castle, there’s no way he can agree with the methods- the vigilante justice. That means that Matt has to reevaluate what he’s doing, if it’s helpful or detrimental to society.”
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“The Catholicism helps. If you want to play a complex, turmoiled character, give him a dose of Catholicism.”
On why there are so many superheroes on TV:
Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page): Something that occurred to me about Daredevil, specifically, is that sometimes we as humans want to become the things that we fear. I was reading about werewolves and there’s this idea that when we’re scared of something, we create these myths about becoming these things we fear. We have a holiday where we do this every year. I think in a way, what Daredevil does, is- if bad guys are out there terrorizing good citizens, Daredevil becomes the thing that terrorizes them. He takes on the thing that we’re most afraid of and makes it good. And yes, living in a very scary world that we live in today, there’s something comforting in that. That someone who is good can flip the cards on something that they’re scared of.
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MM/DD: It taps into the child in all of us. We love the idea of being able to battle- and defeat- our difficulties, whether our difficulty is a Green Goblin or an emotional difficulty with another human being or a character flaw or whatever it is. You see a superhero and you can’t help but champion that. You want them to succeed. You want them to do the things that you can’t and maybe you enjoy the idea that that’s possible.
On why we love Karen, even if she’s no longer a True Blood vampire:
DAW: [Fight choreography’s] never a burden- that stuff’s fun, and when you have as qualified stunt professionals and choreographers as we have on this show, it’s a privilege to work with them. However, I like that Karen can’t resort to throwing a punch, so she has to beat you with her brain. Or she has to trick you and be one step ahead of you. So in a way, even though I’m not playing a physically strong character, I get to expand upon her other skills, which may be less tangible, but just as cool. (laughs) I fall down really well.
(photo credit: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Netflix)
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