Jon Bernthal has revealed that he initially turned down the opportunity to reprise his role as the Punisher in Marvel’s new Daredevil series Born Again.
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Speaking exclusively to Entertainment Weekly, Bernthal said that when Marvel first approached him about returning as the brutal vigilante Frank Castle, whom he played in Netflix’s Daredevil and The Punisher series, it didn’t feel right to say yes. The show was originally pitched as more of a legal procedural, and less of a continuation of the established Daredevil mythology.
Regarding this first incarnation, Bernthal said: “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.
“It was not something I was really interested in doing. So we had to walk away.”
Born Again went through an intense creative overhaul midway through production, with a new showrunner (Dario Scardapane, who worked on the original The Punisher show) brought on board, new episodes shot and other characters from the Netflix version back in the picture, including Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Elden Henson’s Foggy Nelson.
When Bernthal was approached a second time, he could see a way back for Frank, and was given the chance to collaborate on how it happened. “They really brought me into the conversation,” the actor said. “We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank’s at physically.”
Castle appears in the fourth episode of Born Again, titled ‘Sic Semper Systema’. Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock tracks him down whilst looking for the murderer of his former client, and finding the Punisher logo on the bullet he was killed with. The scene is a dramatic reunion of the former adversaries, as Castle gets in Murdock’s head about the death of Foggy at the opening of the series, beckoning him to let his horn-wearing alter-ego back out.
Regarding the scene, Bernthal said: “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.”
Outside of Born Again, Bernthal is also set to return for a standalone Punisher TV special, similar to the MCU’s previous one-off outputs Werewolf By Night or The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special.
Daredevil: Born Again landed a five-star review from NME, with Ali Shutler writing that it “does a brilliant job of embedding itself into that shared universe. Events from across the MCU are naturally referenced and there are also a few tantalising teases about what comes next. Thankfully, a second season is already in the works. None of that distracts from a tightly wound plot that makes space for emotional growth and more than a few big swings. Nostalgia be damned.”
Daredevil: Born Again is streaming on Disney+ now.