#finally a new interview at last!!! 😁💗✨

[charliethomascoxuniverse]

Charlie Cox: ‘I love being a superhero — I thought that ship had sailed’

Charlie Cox on the return of Daredevil, the joys of sea swimming in Dalkey and his rewarding character-driven work in RTÉ’s Kin

Kirsty Blake Knox   April 27, 2023 (X)

Charlie Cox is a busy man; he smiles widely from the back of a car as it ferries him from a physical therapy session to the set of Disney’s Daredevil.

“We’ve just kind of started, it’s really great. Pretty intense, hence the physical therapy,” he says.

Cox has returned to play Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer-slash-superhero.

The show started life on Netflix and ran for three seasons before it was cancelled in 2018.This resulted in an online #SaveDaredevil campaign which resulted in 400,000 signatures begging Marvel to bring him back.

It took a little time; a contractual clause prevented any characters from the Marvel-Netflix shows from appearing in any non-Netflix projects for two years after cancellation.

And now Cox is suiting up again in his Spandex costume, running around punching people in the face and fighting for justice. It’s a demanding shoot — the series is 18 episodes long. And he is a fan of doing as many of his stunts as possible.

“I kind of get involved as much as I’m allowed to and is appropriate. Obviously, the stunt team are professionals and there are things they can do that I can’t even get close to,” he says. “I feel like the name of the game is to get as involved as you can… it makes the scenes more realistic.”

Cox took on the role, which had once been played by Ben Affleck in 2015. At the time, landing the role came as a shock.

“I never thought of myself as being appropriate casting for an American superhero. That never really occurred to me,” he says. “And in my 20s, a lot of my friends, and a lot of British actors, had gone and done that already. So when I got to 30 I was pretty confident that ship had sailed. I was very fortunate to get a character that I’ve now been playing for almost 10 years. It’s unbelievable.”

Cox is a father to two young children (seven and three) but they are a little young to fully grasp the role their dad plays in the Marvel Universe.

“I’m not sure they quite understand… One of the books we read him (his three-year-old) is called Superbat. A bat who is a superhero. But that’s his only real understanding. And so he thinks that I’m Superbat,” he laughs.

Cox realised he wanted to be an actor while in school and studied at Bristol Old Vic drama school. His first big break came in 2007 when he starred in Stardust alongside Robert De Niro and Michele Pfeiffer.

He has performed on the West End and Donmar Warehouse, in dramas like Treason and took on the role of Owen Sleater in Martin Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire. For Irish viewers, we can see Cox on our screens every Sunday night, as Michael Kinsella in gangland drama Kin.

It’s pretty unusual for Marvel Universe actors to appear in a homegrown Irish drama. But Cox’s wife is executive producing the series. When another project he was attached to fell through, he read the scripts and felt compelled to be part of it.

“I’ve been working probably 20-plus years, and there’s a handful of times where I’ve read a script and felt like I’m reading something written by a truly brilliant writer,” he says. “And that quality of scripts never ceased. Sometimes you can get a really good pilot episode. But then as you get deeper into the season, some of the writing starts to disintegrate a little bit, but with Peter (McKenna) that was never the case.”

Obviously, the scale of production is a lot smaller on Kin than other productions, but he says these productions can be just as, if not more, rewarding to work on.

“If you have a limited budget, the way you handle that is you write long character-driven scenes… So weirdly, the lower budget stuff often is more appealing. Because you get to really get deep into the character and the relationships and the dynamics… it’s sort of like theatre. So, from my point of view, sometimes that stuff is more appealing.”

He continues; “I’ve learned I’m not precious about my character’s involvement. I don’t care much if my character does cool stuff … what I care about is, ‘are they moving?’”

He says this is some of the appeal of playing Michael.

“This life that he’d come from…and now he’s trying to rekindle a relationship with his daughter. [The] vulnerability, and the desire, and the need to fundamentally change his nature. That was really exciting to me.”

Cox perfected his Irish accent by listening to the voice of former Dublin goalkeeper, Shane Supple. He got up to speed with Ireland’s gangland scene by listening to podcasts featuring award winning crime journalist Nicola Tallant.

“I was kind of blissfully ignorant of the whole thing,” he says. “When I actually read the first two scripts, I just thought it was all fiction and then I agreed to do the part and I started doing my research. I was like, ‘oh, shit, this stuff is happening. It’s current and it’s happening right now.’”

Despite the violent nature of the series, he found filming and living in Ireland to be idyllic.

He and his family were based in the seaside village of Dalkey — where Matt Damon was holed up during lockdown. Cox became a sea swimming fanatic while residing there.

“I absolutely loved being there… I had conversations with my wife about moving to Dublin because I loved it so much. It’s not really viable with my job… Season one, we’re in lockdown. We lived in Hanover Quay, which was delightful…

“Season two, we moved to Dalkey. I felt like it was one of the best kept secrets in Europe… I was swimming in Vico every day… I found it to be like a haven. And I would love an opportunity to go back at any stage.”

Cox is extremely polite and amenable. And modest — despite his success, Cox says he still suffers professional insecurities.

“I never think I’m going to be hired,” he laughs. “I read years ago that Christopher Walken always thinks his job he’s doing is going to be the last time he is hired. I don’t quite have that, but I certainly identify with it. I’ve never felt like ‘Oh, I’m always going to be hired.’”

He says this comes with some advantages, as it makes him more present.

“I’m filming in New York and I’m lucky enough that I’m still able to play a kind of a lead in a TV show,” he says. “You know, the time is ticking on that in a big way. And so I certainly don’t want to wish that away.

“It would be easy to kind of bemoan the amount of hours you have to work, and missing the family, but there’ll come a time where I would kill to be able to be the lead in the TV show. I think the trick is to really enjoy it while it lasts.”

As he makes his way out of his car and towards his makeup chair, I ask if he has any projects outside of Daredevil coming down the tracks.

“I’m going to be doing this until the end of the year. And then I’ll be back on the panic station wondering if I am ever going to work again,” he laughs.

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