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BETTER THE
DEVIL YOU KNOW
F*** lawyers up with Charlie Cox, star of Netflix’s Daredevil
By Jedd Jong
F*** lawyers up with Charlie Cox, star of Netflix’s Daredevil
By Jedd Jong
Matt Murdock escaped
the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen for a sojourn in Singapore, which does not
have nearly as many ninja assassins roving the streets. F*** was in attendance
as Netflix put together a meet-and-greet for social media influencers to rub
shoulders with the Man Without Fear himself, Charlie Cox. The lobby of boutique
hotel The Club had been transformed into a Netflix theme park of sorts dubbed
“Club Netflix”, sporting décor reflecting Orange
is the New Black (duct tape slippers), Narcos
(fake bills bearing Pablo Escobar’s face), Jessica
Jones (an Alias Investigations sign on the washroom door), and, of course, Daredevil – a plaque reading “Nelson and
Murdock: Avocados at Law” had been installed on the wall outside.
Cox was, as many of
his fans would expect, supremely charming as he fielded questions from the
star-struck social media personalities present. He looked thrilled to see a cosplayer
show up to the shindig in full Daredevil regalia and reacted positively when
this writer showed Cox a Matt Murdock custom action figure he had made.
Daredevil is currently in its second season, with all episodes streaming on
Netflix. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has spread far beyond the silver
screen, now encompassing shows on TV and online streaming platforms. Cox’s
portrayal of Murdock, a lawyer who was blinded as a child in an accident but
gained superhuman senses as a by-product, has attracted praise from fans and
critics alike.
“It’s a job,” Cox said
with a laugh when asked what drew him to the role – but it was soon clear that
this is a job the actor takes very seriously. “I just thought it was so
different, interesting and sophisticated, unlike any superhero show that I’d
seen, and I thought it was a very cool opportunity,” he said. Cox hadn’t read
the comics before accepting the role, which he said was “helpful” as his first
exposure to the character was the script for the first two episodes, written by
Drew Goddard. Cox would later delve into the source material, and he identified
Brian Michael Bendis’, Frank Miller’s and Jeph Loeb’s respective runs as
writers on Daredevil as the biggest
influences that the show drew upon.
Cox addressed the 2003
Daredevil film starring Ben Affleck,
saying he was determined to be secure in his own portrayal of Murdock before
watching the movie, which he eventually got around to. “I had heard a lot of
jokey negativity about this film. Funnily enough, when I watched the film, I
think Ben Affleck did a really good job. I really liked his Daredevil,” Cox remarked.
He added that he feels “the film suffers tonally,” which is a widely-held
opinion. “What’s interesting about it is that I don’t think you can compare the
two,” he continued. “The film is closer tonally to Stan Lee’s Daredevil. It’s more light-hearted, it’s
more comic book-y, and it’s geared towards a slightly younger audience. It’s a
very different interpretation.”
As with any
live-action portrayal of a comic book character, the costume has drawn much
scrutiny. For the first 12 episodes of the 13-episode first season, we only see
Murdock clad in a thrown-together black get-up, with the full reveal of the
Daredevil costume coming in the final episode. “If you get it wrong, people are
upset,” Cox said, acknowledging the importance of the design. The old-fashioned
technique of constructing a special effects costume involves taking full-body
moulds of the actor, but Cox underwent a more high-tech process: a full body
laser scan.
When Cox wore the suit
on the set for the first time, security was extremely tight so images would not
be leaked, and the 150 person-strong crew were all eager to catch a glimpse of
the Daredevil costume. “I felt a little embarrassed because everyone was
looking at me,” Cox said. Donning the armour tapped into Cox’s childhood dreams
of being Spider-Man. “Now I’m cooler, I’m Daredevil!” he exclaimed, throwing a
little shade in the web-crawler’s direction.
While Cox confirmed
that the initial black outfit was obviously more comfortable, he said the most
recent suit, the third in the series’ continuity, is his favourite for reasons
of form and function. “It’s the iconic red suit: it’s a very cool texture, it
feels cool when you’re wearing the suit, but it’s also protective.” He
clarified that it wasn’t like “really getting beaten up”, but the stunts and
fighting still take their toll. Cox revealed that co-star Jon Bernthal (Frank
Castle/The Punisher) got a little too into character. “He was kicking me in the
stomach, really hard. He didn’t realise he was doing it! But luckily I had this
chest plate on so it was protecting me. After about ten takes, I was like
‘dude, you gotta stop kicking me!’”
Speaking of The
Punisher, his introduction into the MCU via Daredevil’s
second season has gotten Marvel fans all giddy. The character serves as a foil
for Daredevil, who does not endorse Punisher’s brutal, merciless brand of
vigilante justice. Over the course of the season, Murdock comes to understand
Castle and his tragic motives, but Punisher’s entry onto the scene is a wake-up
call of sorts. Murdock comes to realise that he is “is responsible for people
like Frank Castle showing up in Hell’s Kitchen and the carnage that they
bring,” Cox pointed out. “Potentially more frightening is that if he is
responsible, then he has to stop being Daredevil. And that is something I don’t
think he’s able to do. I think at this point he’s heavily addicted to it and he
will do everything in his power to protect his right to be Daredevil.”
Murdock’s romantic
relationships have always been complicated. Season 1 sees him dating nurse Claire
Temple (Rosario Dawson) and in Season 2, he falls in love with Karen Page
(Deborah Ann Woll), the associate at the Nelson and Murdock law firm. A spanner
in the works manifests itself in the form of Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung), a
debutante/assassin with whom Murdock was involved in college.
“Matt is completely
himself with both of those women,” Cox said of Karen and Elektra, shedding
light on the paradox of how they reinforce different aspects of Murdock’s
personality but he cannot wholly be himself with either. “With Karen, he’s able
to be the man he’s dreamed of being, the man his father wanted him to be.
Someone who majors in kindness and generosity and authenticity and who fights
for law and order and goodness,” Cox reasoned. “That’s who he is, that’s who he
wants to be. But she doesn’t know about this other aspect of his life, which is
a huge part of it, which is Daredevil.”
“With Elektra, the
opposite is true,” Cox said of the femme
fatale. “He’s able to be Daredevil. He’s unashamed of himself as Daredevil
with her, she encourages him. But she also sees a darkness in him and she
encourages him to have a disrespect for property and law and all those things,
which isn’t truly him. He’s torn. Like a lot of people, men, women, across all
generations, they often feel torn.”
Cox got into some of
the technicalities of portraying a sight-impaired person. He trained with consultant
Joe Strechay, who is blind, and also incorporated some mannerisms from a blind
dog he once had. You could hear the hearts in the room being warmed when Cox
talked about his pet. “If you grow up with your sight, you use your eyes for so
much stuff that you don’t even realise,” Cox shared. “Especially when you act,
but even in real life, I can say one thing, but my eyes can tell you that I
mean something very different.” Acting without the use of one’s eyes is a
challenge, since “emotion comes from the eyes.” Cox noticed Strechay would look
towards someone’s mouth when they were talking, because that’s where the sound
comes from, and incorporated that into his portrayal of Murdock.
Cox was honoured by
the American Foundation for the Blind with the Hellen Keller Achievement Award,
and the actor feels privileged to be able to represent the sight-impaired
community and collaborate closely with them. He admitted to feeling a little
embarrassed at the award, saying “I’m just an actor who got a great opportunity
to do a job and I took my job seriously. It’s lovely to be recognised.” Cox has
been involved in outreach programs organised by the Foundation and recently
spoke to the students of the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia.
Cox recounted how his
mother often gets him to talk to her friend’s children when they ask for advice
about being an actor, in order to dissuade them. “The thing that I say to them,
which isn’t really advice, which probably isn’t fun to hear, but is the truth I
think, is ‘get lucky. Get really lucky’,” Cox said. He elaborated that he knows
a “huge amount of very talented actors” who have missed out on many
opportunities. “Don’t get me wrong, I work very hard, but somehow, some way,
I’ve been at the right place at the right time on a number of occasions.” Cox
said he once heard Anthony Hopkins saying that he reads each script 200 times,
and Cox endeavours to read the script more times than one would think is
necessary, to absorb the character “by osmosis.” In addition to Hopkins, Cox
listed Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman as actors he looks up to.
Funnily enough, out of
everyone in the room that day, Cox was probably the only one without a social
media presence. “It’s not really who I am,” he shrugged. Perhaps this adds to
the appeal of Cox as a “serious actor” unoccupied with the frivolities of
Twitter and Instagram.
He recounted the story
of how an (unnamed) good friend of his, a “very well-known actor”, had been
reading the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) message boards and found a thread
calling him the “worst actor on earth”. “So I said to him “buddy, don’t read
that! That’s stupid, why would you pay any attention to it?” However, Cox’s
curiosity was piqued, and he was unable to resist the temptation to look up his
own message boards on IMDb. “I started to scroll down, and the next part of my
life happened in slow motion. As the message boards came up, the first title
was a picture of me and it said ‘She-man?’ and there was a picture of me with
really long hair when I was younger and big lips, I don’t know? My mum finds
that hilarious. Whether that’s constructive criticism or not, I don’t know.”
The actor’s career has
gone unaffected by such trifles and with more seasons of Daredevil in the
works, plus a Defenders team-up show on Netflix and possible appearances in the
movies themselves, Cox is ploughing ahead without fear.
