Jon Bernthal talks ‘The Punisher,’ isolating himself to play Frank Castle
Netflix and Marvel continue to expand their universe with the announced Punisher spin-off starring former Walking Dead, Mob City star Jon Bernthal. Bernthal was introduced as the vigilante during the second season of Daredevil and Deadline has some quotes about the actor getting into the role and comic book fans in general.
Bernthal forced himself into isolation, as he says, “I really felt that for me, to eliminate the creature comforts, to isolate myself from my family, to really actively engage and be open to a relative level of darkness in my life, I think really serves the character and really was essential explore.”
Now, with six film projects in the works and the spin-off coming up, Bernthal seems unstoppable. “I’m just fighting the fight,” he says. “If it’s a good project and they’ll have me, I’m there.”
Comic book fans are excited about this version of Castle and Bernthal credits comic book fans as the most “passionate and intelligent audience there is.”
“What grabbed me about Frank is that he’s the quintessential opposite of that. He has no superpowers. He’s unbelievably human. It’s humanity that makes him such a force to be reckoned with. He’s a man who suffered immeasurable loss. The Frank Castle that we find in DaredevilSeason 2 is not a guy who’s out there trying to rid Hell’s Kitchen of the criminal element. He’s a brokenhearted, completely isolated man who’s lost his wife and kids. He’s reeling, he’s filled with shame and remorse and regret and pain, and he’s a man on a mission. He’s trying to find these people who have taken his heart from him, and he’s trying to kill them, as brutal a way as possible.”
Bernthal praised Netflix and the studio delivering the character for fans.
“It lets you be incredibly bold with your storytelling. It lets you take huge risks. It lets you risk alienating your audience and abandoning your audience, and then being courageous enough to know that you’re going to win them back four episodes down the line, but you know that they don’t have to wait four weeks until they get that episode. I think with a character like Frank Castle, it’s really important to go all the way. When he has a moment of brutality, to make it fully brutal, and then try to explain what he did with the regret and the remorse and the shame. Let that seep in a couple episodes down the road. But to try to play the brutality and shame at the same time, I think it’s not real. I really love the Netflix model, and I think they’re really on to something.”
Check out more over at Deadline