Jon Bernthal originally walked away from Punisher return in ‘Daredevil’ reboot

nme.com:

Marvel’s new Daredevil series Born Again.Speaking exclusively to Entertainment Weekly, Bernthal said that when Marvel first approached him about returning as the brutal vigilante Frank Castle, whom he played in Netflix’s Daredevil and The Punisher series, it didn’t feel right to say yes.

The show was originally pitched as more of a legal procedural, and less of a continuation of the established Daredevil mythology.Regarding this first incarnation, Bernthal said: “Ultimately, I didn’t see it.

I didn’t see the version of Frank, and what they wanted from Frank [didn’t] really make sense to me and I thought would not appeal to the fans and wouldn’t be congruent.“It was not something I was really interested in doing.

So we had to walk away.”Born Again went through an intense creative overhaul midway through production, with a new showrunner (Dario Scardapane, who worked on the original The Punisher show) brought on board, new episodes shot and other characters from the Netflix version back in the picture, including Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Elden Henson’s Foggy Nelson.When Bernthal was approached a second time, he could see a way back for Frank, and was given the chance to collaborate on how it happened. “They really brought me into the conversation,” the actor said. “We really got specific about where Frank is psychologically, where Frank’s at physically.”Castle appears in the fourth episode of Born Again, titled ‘Sic Semper Systema’.