Marvel‘s critical darling “Daredevil: Born Again” not only brings back Charlie Cox‘s Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio‘s Wilson Fisk, but the new revival series from Marvel Television also has the grand return of Jon Bernthal (“The Accountant 2”) as The Punisher, however, as the actor tells it that nearly didn’t happen for creative reasons.
In a new chat with Entertainment Weekly, the actor revealed he nearly wasn’t a part of the show due to the creative choices being made in the previous incarnation and it wasn’t until Marvel Television decided to retool things that he decided to come back to “Daredevil: Born Again.”
READ MORE: Jon Bernthal Promises “Dark” Tone For Gestating ‘Punisher Special Presentation’: “It Will Not Be Punisher-Lite”
“Ultimately, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see the version of Frank, and what they wanted from Frank [didn’t] really make sense to me and I thought would not appeal to the fans and wouldn’t be congruent,” Bernthal told EW. “It was not something I was really interested in doing. So we had to walk away.”
“They really brought me into the conversation,” Bernthal said of the circle back after Marvel hired Dario Scardapane (“The Punisher”) as showrunner for the revival during that retooling process and their collaboration. “We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank’s at physically.”
Bernthal saw his minor return in “Daredevil: Born Again” as “just a toe dip” of a reintroduction to Frank Castle before being truly ready to commit to more Punisher at Marvel Studios. Since then, he’s getting ready for his own Marvel Special Presentation on Disney+ with the help of “We Own This City” director Reinaldo Marcus Green.
“I feel like it’s opened the door to getting closer to the Frank Castle that I really, really want to portray. It was like, Let’s see if this works…Let’s see if there’s a real openness and a hunger to let Frank be what Frank is, which is dark enough to have the courage and the boldness to turn your back on the audience and to make it difficult, to make it enormously psychologically complex and to steer away from any cuteness or humor and to really go full bore.”
Could we see more of Bernthal as Castle in his own expanded show on Disney+ or the movies?
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That remains to be seen, a larger narrative for Frank could happen in the second season of “Daredevil: Born Again” (which is actively shooting in New York City) but we’ll have to wait until the dust settles on that production and how fans react to his solo special. At the very least, Bernthal’s passion for the character seems to come from a genuine place of goodwill, and love for the fans, you can’t ask much more than that.