Warning: This article contains spoilers from Vincent D’Onofrio for the season finale of Hawkeye and for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Marvel and Netflix’s Daredevil series may have ended in 2018 after three seasons, but it’s currently having quite a moment. Vincent D’Onofrio reprised his role as Daredevil villain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, in Wednesday’s Hawkeye‘s finale, and last week Charlie Cox surprised (some) fans with his cameo as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home. For D’Onofrio, he couldn’t be happier about this confluence of events, if only because it means he can finally talk about it with his former costar.
“When [Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige] broke the silence about Charlie being in Spider-Man, Charlie and I immediately talked,” D’Onofrio tells EW. “Then when they put out the shot of me on Kate Bishop’s phone in the [penultimate] episode of Hawkeye and that was out in the world, then Charlie and I talked again. So yeah, we constantly fill each other in when stuff has happened so that we can, No. 1, be nostalgic, and No. 2, we can share things as friends.”
Vincent D’Onofrio & Charlie Cox
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Hawkeye‘s final two episodes revealed that D’Onofrio’s crime boss was the leader of the Tracksuit Mafia and was the one who asked Kate Bishop’s (Hailee Steinfeld) mother, Eleanor (Vera Farmiga), to put a hit on Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). In the finale, Kate went toe-to-toe with the Big Guy and knocked him out to save her mom’s life, but it was Kingpin’s niece Maya (Alaqua Cox) who got the last word. In the wake of finding out Fisk killed her father, Maya sought revenge and shot her uncle at point-blank range. However, we never saw his body, which means it’s likely he’ll be back. (Plus, wouldn’t it be lame if Marvel brought Kingpin back just to immediately kill him off?)
That said, D’Onofrio’s appearance in Hawkeye does raise questions about Daredevil‘s connection to the MCU as a whole and whether the actor was playing exactly the same character. Below, D’Onofrio shares his perspective on that query, what it was like stepping into the character’s shoes after several years away, and more.
How did your return as Kingpin come together? When did you get the call they wanted you back?
VINCENT D’ONOFRIO: I think it was earlier this year at this point. I heard that Kevin had asked for my number, my representatives told me that, and he called me. I had no idea what he was going to say. He asked me to come and do Hawkeye, which, as you can imagine, was extremely exciting.
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Fans on Twitter constantly tell you how much they want you back as Kingpin. Were you surprised when the call came through or were you always holding out hope that you’d been able to reprise the role?
I was surprised. I had held out hope that Daredevil would somehow survive even after we stopped, but that ended quickly. But I always kept supporting the fans and their excitement about Daredevil, and also their excitement about my character. But you know, I never really thought it was going to happen, so it was obviously a pleasant surprise that Hawkeye was one of the things that Kevin wanted me to do. It’s amazing.
After so many years away, did you have any trouble finding the character again?
It’s a tough character to play in that it’s based on a lot of his pain from his childhood. Once I reconnected to the way I played him [on Daredevil], what the events in his life were, and attached myself to the emotional aspects of the character, then it was fine, I was good to go. I know that we were picking up with the same guy. It’s tough to connect all the dots, but they connected as many as they could and that he had lost a bit of his power because of the Blip. But the idea [was] to bring him into Hawkeye, to have him be that same character that he was in the earlier show, and play him like that.
How did you go about reconnecting with the character’s pain? Did you go back rewatch Daredevil?
No, I wouldn’t go back and look at my stuff. I don’t do that. There are emotional events that we all have in our lives, and you kind of mix and match what would work for your character, and then it’s my job to get in touch with that event that happened in my life and speak through that event if it matches the right emotion for the character. With Fisk, I just speak the authors’ words through events that have happened in life, like we have all have, that make us happy or sad.
Did you have any input when it came to putting Fisk in a Hawaiian shirt under his iconic white suit?
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I believe that the Hawaiian shirt, white suit, and hat is from the “Family Business” comic [arc]. It’s actually my screensaver on my computer, and it has been since I started doing Daredevil years ago. So I think it came from that, [and] the aspect of the collaboration with the incredible costume people there. With Fisk, like a lot of the characters in the MCU, there’s a palette of looks that they’ve had over the years and we had a lot of to choose from. So yeah, I have input and it’s like a collaborative effort. It’s really fun being creative with the Marvel team. They’re also smart and everybody is sort of on the same page. They want everything to be great. So it’s just working towards that.
How did your fight scene with Kate in this episode compares to the ones you did on Daredevil?
He’s so much stronger physically on Hawkeye and he can take a lot more physical abuse, so that was very different. But as far as what makes him tick and his anger within those fight scenes is the same. A lot of the stuff I used to do with Charlie, just in my mind Daredevil was just a fly in his way, and so I had that same kind of attitude with Haliee’s character, Kate. That’s how I feel about them always, that they’re just in my way and they need to be swatted away.
You mentioned earlier that this is “one of the things” Feige wanted you to do. This episode ends with Maya shooting Fisk, but we don’t actually see his body. Should fans be glad we/ they didn’t see a body because it means the door is open for you to come back?
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