Marvel's Daredevil season 3 big bad talks about donning the iconic white suit
Actors Vincent D'Onofrio, Jay Ali and Wilson Bethel reveal the dangers of becoming Wilson Fisk's puppets in the Netflix show.
Our heroes are defined by their villains, and Daredevil has one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's greatest in Wilson Fisk. Played by Vincent D'Onofrio, the looming crime boss brutally beat, murdered and manipulated his way to the top of New York's underworld in the first season.
Season 3, which hit Netflix on Friday, kicks off with Fisk in prison and motivated by one thing: reuniting with Vanessa, the woman he loves.
We sat down with D'Onofrio, along with co-stars Jay Ali and Wilson Bethel, during New York Comic Con to discuss the man known in the comics as Kingpin and the new characters that become his pawns.
"He wants to feel complete again, and she makes him feel that way," D'Onofrio said. "He wants to get out… and things go awry from there. They get pretty violent and pretty manipulative."
FBI Agent Ray Nadeem prepares for a fateful assignment.
One of the people he uses is FBI Agent Ray Nadeem (played by Ali), a decent man who's struggling financially when he's assigning to become Fisk's handler and must probe him for intel on the city's gangs -- which he offers in exchange for Vanessa getting impunity.
"I start being able to provide for my family more, but what I'm really doing is just getting manipulated by Fisk," Ali told us, before highlighting how much he learned from D'Onofrio.
"I was very lucky that my first four or five episodes are with Vincent," Ali said. "So straight away, I knew I had to be on my game, because you work with this guy, you're going to get found out."
Fisk finds another pawn in Agent Benjamin Poindexter (portrayed by Bethel), who has a spectacular introduction in season 3's second episode and ultimately becomes this show's version of terrifying Daredevil comic book nemesis, Bullseye.
"He starts out the season as a highly trained, very skillful FBI agent and sniper who has some serious physiological issues," Bethel said in our interview. "Those physiological issues are then preyed upon by Wilson Fisk and ultimately, I go to some pretty... dark places."
Agent Benjamin Poindexter never misses his target.
He highlighted the physical nature of his role and spoke highly of the show's stunt team, which he said operated out of an "impromptu gym setup lovingly known as The Dojo." This is where the cast trained and worked through the choreography for the action scenes -- one of the show's hallmarks since the beginning.
"It's an amazing thing to have all those guys who are so lovely, and ready and willing to teach you the incredible skill sets that they have," he told us. "These are some of the most physically adept people you'll ever meet."
Of course, the physical aspect of the show is always reinforced by the outfits the characters wear -- from Matt's black garb to his red Daredevil costume. Season 3 gives Wilson Fisk his own costume as he dons the traditional white suit that the character has worn in comics since his 1967 debut, much to D'Onofrio's delight.
Looks like Fisk knows he'll be getting some blood on the iconic white suit.
"It was fantastic. We had always talked about when it would be appropriate to bring the white suit in, but it had to come eventually," the actor said.
D'Onofrio told us that he'd asked Bill Sienkiewicz, one of his favorite comic book artists, to send him some Fisk art for inspiration.
Artist Bill Sienkiewicz, who drew this variant cover for Kingpin No. 1, sent Vincent D'Onofrio a box of his work to inspire the actor.
"He sent me a box of incredible stuff, and I I brought some of it to work every day with me. I didn't show anybody, but I had it with me," he said, noting that much of it depicted the character in his white suit.
D'Onofrio worked closely with the show's wardrobe department, which found an "incredible fabric" for the suit.
"It's pretty cool, Because it is in fact something that the fans have been waiting for, and so I have a feeling we pulled it off," he said. "It made me feel like the journey is moving forward with the character."
Even if the character has adopted the outfit of his comic book counterpart, D'Onofrio told us that he couldn't be comfortable for us to start calling him "Kingpin."
"I prefer Wilson Fisk, you know, so if you're going to continue there could be a problem," he said, bringing the interview to a suitably menacing end.
Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 is on Netflix now but check out our interviews with the show's heroes and its creators for more delicious nuggets of information.
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