One Daredevil Scene Convinced Vincent D'Onofrio That Charlie Cox Was Perfectly Cast

Charlie Cox's Daredevil and Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin have spent five seasons of television battling each other. At this point, they're certainly in the pantheon of incredible and enduring superhero/villain nemeses acting partnerships, like Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto (or Kevin Conroy's Batman and Mark Hamill's Joker)

In a GQ video breaking down his most famous roles, D'Onofrio discussed his years on "Daredevil," from the beginnings of working with Cox to where they are today.

"You jump to now, and just over the years, we are real partners on the show," D'Onofrio noted while talking about their recent work together on "Daredevil: Born Again." "All of our notes are very similar all the time. We never disagree about anything."

As D'Onofrio tells it, he first met Charlie Cox "briefly" at a dinner hosted by former Marvel Television Head Jeph Loeb. Onscreen, "Daredevil" Season 1 built up to Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk first meeting each other. Their first interaction isn't face to face, but over walkie-talkies in Episode 6, "Condemned," when Matt is trapped in an abandoned building after being framed for a bombing campaign in Hell's Kitchen. Shooting Cox's side of that scene was when D'Onofrio first saw Cox on set:

"I was mic'd, he was mic'd, but we were talking on the walkie-talkie, having this conversation. You know, he handled the dialogue great, but he was on the floor in this office, but then during the scene, he made this leap onto one of the desks, and then leaped to another one, and then walked on the furniture. I remember thinking, 'Oh my god, this guy is actually Daredevil.'"

How fitting that this scene, where Daredevil and Kingpin begin to understand each other, is what showed D'Onofrio how well-cast Cox was as Daredevil.

"It all just sort of came to me in that moment," Vincent D'Onofrio continued; for him, this moment is both when his relationship with Charlie Cox began and when it became clear for him that "Daredevil" could be a great show:

"If we're both kind of grounded as actors, and we're not playing like over the top superheroes, or particularly over the top superheroes, and we keep the show grounded, and he can do that, and if I'm able to bring in what I want to bring in, this show is going to be good."

Indeed, Cox was interested in playing Daredevil partially because he saw how the series' scripts were "dark and geared to a much more mature audience" compared to the Marvel movies he had seen. Part of the realness of "Daredevil" is the action, which Cox has said was reflected in the messiness of the fight choreography:

"In reality, when two people fight, they grapple and they don't necessarily connect all of their punches. People get in headlocks and they try and get in under the other person's ribs and all that kind of stuff, so we wanted to stay true to that. And of course every now and again Daredevil manages this 360 flip-kick."

Those sorts of acrobatics aren't the sole challenge Cox meets in playing the character. Cox has said that, in playing Matt Murdock, he empathized with his strong sense of inner conflict. Born and raised Catholic, Daredevil is plagued by guilt, but never so much that he permanently quits his vigilante life, because violence is like an addiction to him. 

While Charlie Cox can handle the action demands of "Daredevil," it's his portrayal of Matt Murdock's tormented spirit that makes him so perfectly cast.