Vincent DOnofrio had a ritual he went through every time he needed to get into the mindset of Wilson Fisk, the all-powerful, ultra-evil mobster he plays on Netflixs hit series Daredevil. The 55-year-old actor would go someplace quiet, pull out his smartphone and stare at paintings of the character from Marvels latter-day Daredevil comics. The way they drew him...it wasnt just that he was this imposing, kind of massive guy, says DOnofrio. He looked broken. That was the key.
Its that combination of vulnerability and violence that has made Fisk the bruised heart of the show and the best new villain on TV. Vincents the sweetest guy, says Charlie Cox, who plays Daredevil, but there were days on set where it would be just chilling to watch him.
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DOnofrio remembered the brooding, bald Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, from Spider-Man comics he read as a kid. In the Seventies and Eighties, he worked as a bouncer in New York clubs. I saw a lot of things I would not necessarily talk about in an interview, DOnofrio says, chuckling. It was pretty crazy. There was a lot of violence. Some of it was really tough to be around.... You had to watch your ass.
But while he made his name playing characters like Pvt. Pyle, the soldier who loses his shit in Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket, and villains in movies like Men in Black and The Cell, DOnofrio was determined to avoid turning the hulking gangster into a cartoonish heavy. I mean, who wouldnt want to play a Marvel villain? he asks. But from the very beginning, neither myself nor [showrunner] Steven S. DeKnight ever thought of Wilson as a thuggish brute. The idea was always that he was just an emotionally complicated man who, even if he was capable of doing horrendous things, had his reasons. I didnt want to make him a bad guy. DOnofrio pauses. I still havent gotten used to folks calling him a villain, actually. I think Im going to have to come to terms with people saying that.
Fisk is a 180-degree turn from DOnofrios best-known television role, playing Detective Robert Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I still have older women who come up to me screaming, Law & Order! he says. But then I was taking my son to school the other day and he told me, My friend wants to meet Wilson. The kid was a big Daredevil fan, so I went into the cafeteria and Ive never seen anyone so excited. Its a whole new audience.