Since the 2015 Netflix series, it’s nearly impossible to imagine Charlie Cox’s Daredevil without Jon Bernthal’s Punisher. But Bernthal recently revealed why he wasn’t originally going to be part of the Disney+ revival Daredevil: Born Again.
The Wolf of Wall Street actor explained that when he was first approached for the series, he wasn’t entirely thrilled with the direction the creative team wanted to take The Punisher, also known as Frank Castle.
“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,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I thought [it] would not appeal to the fans and wouldn’t be congruent. It was not something I was really interested in doing. So we had to walk away.”
After the series went through a massive creative overhaul post-strikes, producer Dario Scardapane was brought on as the series’ new showrunner — and that’s when Bernthal began to see a place for Frank in Born Again.
“They really brought me into the conversation,” the actor explained of Scardapane, with whom he’d previously worked on The Punisher series, and Marvel. “We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank’s at physically.”
Warning! Spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again follow.
The show brought Punisher back for a short reunion scene with Matt Murdock in its latest episode, but the moment is quite heartfelt and genuine — so it seems as though whatever we’ll be getting from Bernthal in this reboot series will be worth it.
“It was like, let’s see if this works,” he explained of the “toe-dip” reintroduction of his character in Episode 4. “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.”
Clearly, Bernthal is back in the Punisher zone for real, as he is set to not only appear in Season 2 of Born Again, but has also received the green light to write and star in a standalone Punisher TV special. He told EW: “I feel like it’s opened the door to getting closer to the Frank Castle that I really, really want to portray.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
