Charlie Cox Talks About the Fun (and Responsibility) of Playing DAREDEVIL

Charlie Cox has a lot on his plate right now. Not only is he starring in the upcoming film The Theory of Everything, but he’s also starring in Marvel Comics’ first Netflix series Daredevil, where he plays the titular hero. Cox himself had no idea the level of fandom and sense of obligation surrounding this new incarnation of Matt Murdock, which he explained to Heat Vision during an early premiere of his new film.

“It’s great fun, but it also comes with a great deal of responsibility. I wasn’t really aware of how vast the comic book world was until I became part of the Marvel universe. I went to Comic Con last week, and it’s really important to a lot of people. It really is. I’m having a great time.”

Cox, first seen as Daredevil wearing a black stealth suit, drives home the idea that this take on The Man Without Fear is taking its cues from Frank Miller’s tenure on the title in the early 1980s, where Murdock went from being a swashbuckling superhero to a hardened urban crimefighter. And while Cox assured that the show will remain faithful to the comics, he says there will be an interesting take on Matt Murdock’s personality and his reasons for being Daredevil.

“I’ve read comics after comics after comics – I’ve never read so many comics in my life, and we’re finding moments from the comics to reference in the show.We’re trying to make a show that’s new and much, much darker than anything I’ve ever seen Marvel do before. The concept that he can’t stop. He’s going out and he’s taking the law into his own hands, and he doesn’t know if he can stop. He might be addicted to it.”

I’m personally looking forward to how the series will portray Daredevil and his world. Even though he isn’t as famous as Spider-Man, Wolverine, or The Avengers, Daredevil has always had a dedicated following and deserves a chance to shine. We know that the series probably won’t go as dark as other Netflix shows like Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards(this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe after all), in the place of flash and spectacle will be a more mature (and hopefully awesome) form of storytelling — which is something that Marvel hasn’t really touched on since getting it started producing its own films back in 2008. Plus it seems like this show will really dive into the mindset and motivations of a vigilante. I know the typical ones are either “I have superpowers but I’m not bad, so I’ll become a superhero”  or “Someone was taken from me by crime, so now I’ll fight it”, but there has to be a little more to it than that. If you’ve seen specials like Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight and/or read books like The Psychology of Superheroes (and I recommend that you do), then you should look forward to this series.

Also starring Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, and Vincent D’Onofrio, Marvel’s Daredevil follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the vigilante Daredevil in modern day Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. The series will debut sometime in 2015.