Jon Bernthal's Punisher brings menace to 'Daredevil'
Welcome to the gun show.
The Punisher, one of pop culture's most identifiable antiheroes, makes his debut in the second season of Marvel’s Daredevil (premiering on Netflix Friday), and like in the comic books, he arrives with a vengeful mean streak and armed to the teeth.
As played by Jon Bernthal, though, the character’s not sporting that iconic skull on his chest at first. Instead, the focus is more on Frank Castle, the man rather than the infamous name and a former soldier waging his own street war in New York City to take out the criminals who killed his family.
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"This is going to be a bit of an origin story, and we find this guy still absolutely reeling and his world has been completely flipped upside down," says Bernthal, who’s played violent characters before on TV’s The Walking Dead and in the World War II movie Fury.
"This unbelievable trauma that he went through, what impression does that leave on him and how is he going to move forward? The way I look at it, that’s going to be a part of him forever and it’s going to color every move he makes, every thought he has. We’ll see the birth of a Punisher."
Of course, a guy running around killing people in Hell’s Kitchen is going to get on the crazy-good radar of the locale’s resident blind superhero Daredevil and his attorney alter ego Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). Matt at first feels that his own presence as a vigilante has wrought men like the Punisher, and the run-ins between the two lead to them first being foes and later, uneasy allies.
After having chained the hero on a rooftop, Frank tells Daredevil, "You know, you're one bad day away from being me" — a line that goes back to a discussion Cox first had with the first-season showrunner Steven DeKnight in fleshing out Daredevil's mind-set and personality, according to the series’ star.
And Bernthal fit the Frank Castle mold perfectly because of what he brings to his roles, Cox says. "He doesn’t necessarily need to do very much to be very menacing. That’s the thing with these antiheroes: It needs to feel effortless, otherwise it begins to become caricature-ish."
Plus Bernthal looks the part, adds executive producer Douglas Petrie: "He’s got a face with a nose that’s been broken 14 times. That’s literally true."
Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson have played the Punisher on the big screen, with varying degrees of success. But what was needed for Daredevil was "a (Taxi Driver) Travis Bickle Punisher: a very grounded guy who looked like a walking powder keg," says executive producer Marco Ramirez.
With Marvel’s Netflix mold of a well-woven crime-world tapestry, he adds, "we’re telling crime stories that are as close to The Shield as they are to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. We weren’t talking about the action figure yet — we were talking about him as a human being."
Frank is a very damaged but also, deep down, a good and just man, and because of that, the Punisher’s pain is felt more than his violent nature, according to Bernthal.
"The single most important thing for me in my preparation for playing this part was being a father and having children," he says. "I don’t think this is really a part that somebody should play without a family. You’ve gotta know what that feels like, and then you’ve gotta go to as dark a place as possible."
