Following the cancellation of Netflix’s Daredevil, what a pleasant surprise it's been for both Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Marvel characters to get a second life in the MCU. With D’Onofrio reprising the legendary comic book villain Wilson Fisk as a part of the Echo cast and Daredevil: Born Again, which is among upcoming Marvel TV shows, CinemaBlend spoke to the actor about whether he differentiates his two eras as Kingpin.
During my conversation with Vincent D’Onofrio, where he also shared his thoughts on his Echo arc being a “good start” for his upcoming Daredevil return, I spoke with him about how he treats his performance as a whole between his original Daredevil run and its continuation in the MCU. In his words:
I think it all kind of comes together for me as the actor. I'm not sure it all fits perfectly from show to show, but, you know, my job as an actor is to service the story, whatever the script is. That's my job at hand. But just from my point of view as the actor, I think it all counts to me, like all of it. And I carry the whole of it with me to each particular episode of each particular show. I think that there's gonna be a lot of what's in Echo when it comes to my character, Fisk, a lot of the way he's feeling and where he is in life in the new Born Again series.
While Wilson Fisk’s storylines may not perfectly intertwine between his role in the Netflix Marvel world and his place in the MCU, D’Onofrio takes his entire experience playing the character with him and counts it all as one performance. I had asked the actor if he viewed the MCU Kingpin as a “different shade” of the same character, and he shared that his main concern is serving the scripts in front of him each time he plays the villain, but in his mind, he definitely thinks it “all counts.”
It’s definitely interesting to hear Vincent D’Onofrio’s perspective on the whole thing after having the unique experience of playing the same role across multiple productions with different filmmakers, casts and crews around him. At this point, the actor has played the role for about a decade now (give or take the break he had between Daredevil’s 2018 cancellation and his surprise entrance into the MCU with 2021’s Hawkeye), and he'll continue to with both the 2024 TV schedule's Echo and the upcoming Daredevil series.
While speaking about his role as Kingpin moving forward, he also shared that he feels that his role in Echo is especially helpful emotionally when it comes to what is coming next for the character in Charlie Cox’s big MCU return in Daredevil: Born Again. It’s quite incredible that Kingpin has had such a long life on our televisions from the Netflix iteration of the character to his part in the MCU in recent years, and Vincent D’Onofrio is very much embracing each version as Wilson Fisk’s plot thickens.
You can watch Kingpin as his fatherly relationship with Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez plays out in Echo. The season in full is now streaming for those with a Disney+ subscription or a Hulu subscription.
