Jon Bernthal Describes How Dark He Went To Play The Punisher In ‘Daredevil’

After a great season one, everyone has been quite excited about season two of Daredevil, which premiered Friday morning at 3 a.m. But as cool as Matt Murdock and his alter ego Daredevil have been, a lot of the hype for this season has been stolen by the arrival of classic Marvel anti-hero the Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal.

You probably know Jon Bernthal best as Shane from the first two seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead, so you already know he can play a man pushed beyond his limits. But Bernthal said he had to get to an even darker place to channel the Punisher’s rage, and that involved thinking dark thoughts about his family.

“Us actors do weird stuff, man,” he said in an interview with ABC News. “There’s no way I could even begin to tackle this role if I wasn’t a father and a husband in my mind.”

“You realize what it’s like to love somebody more than yourself and be willing to give up your life for them in a heartbeat. It all starts there and it definitely gets pretty dark, pretty quickly.”

Read between the lines there … he’s totally talking about imagining his family dying, and what that would do to him. That’s pretty dark indeed, and it must have been a strain to exist inside the role through the show’s shooting. Did he pull it off and capture the Punisher’s loss and resolve effectively? And where will fans rate him in the pantheon of Punishers from Thomas Jane to Ray Stevenson to Dolph Lundgren?

There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by digging into season two of Daredevil, live on Netflix right now.

(via ABC News)

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