Interview: Charlie Cox on ‘Daredevil’ prep; bingeing on comics and 8 meals daily

TORONTO – “Daredevil” star Charlie Cox admits he’s had a lot of catching up to do.

The British actor was never much of a comic book fan. And when he was tapped to play the gritty superhero for the live-action Netflix series, he had to join a gym for the first time in his life.

A mountain of comics and 25 pounds of muscle later, Cox hits screens on Friday with his take on blind lawyer Matt Murdoch and his masked-vigilante alter ego.

“The good thing about Daredevil is he doesn’t have super-strength,” says Cox, thankful he didn’t have to match the bulky physique of “Man of Steel” star Henry Cavill.

“I’m one of those annoying people who (can easily) lose weight. I had to eat seven or eight times a day.”

“Daredevil” is just the first of several Netflix superhero shows in the pipeline, with others focusing on Marvel characters Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

The Canadian Press spoke with Cox by phone from New York about helming a fresh franchise, pleasing the fans, and finding his inner superhero.

CP: How has your indoctrination into the Marvel Universe been?

Cox: It’s been a pretty wild journey…. That whole journey of discovering the character, and the filming process, and all that kind of stuff was one thing, and then everything that involves fandom has been a whole other wild journey — going to Comic Con and having the images released on the Internet and the premiere last week, and all that kind of stuff is a whole new ball game.

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CP: Was there much room for you to put your own spin on the character?

Cox: Very much so. Marvel was very, very generous and trusting of me with the character. They kind of made that point early on and said, “Look, we’ve had the auditions and the screen test, we’ve workshopped the kind of character that we’re trying to find here, but from this point onwards, go out and make him your own.”

There are so many different opinions about who Matt Murdoch is. And also, if you look at the comics for the last 50 years, he, too, has changed from writer to writer, from illustrator to illustrator, quite a fair bit.

So I think it would be a mistake to try and please everyone … but what you do do is you kind of aim to hone in on the consistencies and then choose a character that best represents the series, or the comics that I responded to the most.

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CP: So who is he in this incarnation? What did you most want to drive home?

Cox: These are conversations that I (had) with (executive producer) Jeph Loeb and Steven DeKnight, the showrunner, and the high-up creatives of the show.

But we’re meeting a Matt who’s been refraining from engaging in this kind of activity, this kind of vigilante justice activity, his whole life. His father never wanted him to engage in violence and he’s been resisting it and it’s probably been quite a struggle based on what he’s capable of. He’s finally kind of let go of that, he’s finally, with great emotional conflict, he’s finally giving in to the devil inside him, as it were…. The first 13 episodes deal very much with his evolution from Matt Murdoch into the Daredevil that we recognize from the comics.

The Matt Murdoch that I tried to bring to life was someone who is as human as possible. I really wanted to accentuate the human qualities of a superhero — so, someone who’s very frightened at times and conflicted and confused and also morally ambiguous at times…. At times he’ll go out and he takes it too far. He’ll have to learn those lessons, he’ll have to learn from his mistakes and then when he doesn’t perhaps behave from a place of his best self, he has to then sit with those feelings and look at that and feel the guilt and the shame and the loneliness of that.

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CP: This is a very dark, and violent, show. Is that what distinguishes it from the other Marvel properties?

Cox: It’s geared towards a slightly older audience. The writing, I think, was very sophisticated and has a sinister edge, which is a bold move from Marvel’s point of view.

And also just added to the fact (that it’s) on the Netflix platform, it just changes things slightly in so far as you get to spend a lot more time on story and plot. Because of the way the episodes are released you don’t need to constantly remind people of what happened last week, or you don’t have to end an episode with some sort of a cliffhanger in the hope that you’ll get people coming back the following week. You can just write the 13-hour movie.

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CP: There’s an explosion of superhero stories in film and on TV. What makes this the right time?

Cox: There is a world where these characters are literal inspirations for people. If you can look at why the superhero comic was invented … if you’re open to it they ask very challenging questions, which is: What would you do in this circumstance?

Whether that be: physically take action if you see something going down that you don’t agree with, or whether it just means picking up the phone and dialling 911 rather than turning a back on it and walking the other direction and pretending you didn’t see anything.

It’s a nice idea to think that people can, if they’re willing to, ask themselves to recognize the superhero in themselves.

— This interview has been edited and condensed.