After cameos and supporting roles in previous Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, Hell’s Kitchen’s resident vigilante has made his proper entrance into the MCU with Daredevil: Born Again.
The series’s first season finds Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock fighting to keep his Daredevil persona at bay after a personal tragedy. Production designer Michael Shaw sought to not only portray Murdock via production design but every character in the series. From newly-elected New York City mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) to enforcer Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), every frequented locale feels unique and reflective of the character who inhabits it.
Shaw recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom about being brought on to the Marvel series and representing the different characters in their respective environments.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
Can you talk about what your onboarding process was like and what joining this series was like?
The onboarding process involved reading a pilot script and interviewing. I was very clear with everybody that I’m not a Marvel person. I’m a fan, but I’m not immersed in the comic world, and it wasn’t my genre. They were looking for creative people who could bring a new vision to things and a new perspective.
So, the DP, I, and a few other people were really not the typical kind of people you would go to. That worked out well for me because I didn’t know whether they would respond to that or not, and they did.
Because you weren’t as deep in the Marvel lore when you were about to work on this show, how much did you study the Daredevil characters from the Netflix show and the other Disney+ projects if you did?
I made a point not to because I wanted to retain that fresh perspective. I’d done that on other projects too, where if it’s a story that’s based in reality or has a long history — and I’ve done a few of those kinds of projects — I almost want to look at it as a brand new thing… What can we do to make it different? So, I read the scripts. I had to, of course, look at the Netflix series to know how we would like to change it and what we would want to retain to get to know the characters. But, at first, I just wanted to read everything without knowing anything about it.
When you finally sat down and looked at the Netflix shows to get an aesthetic feel of that project, how much did you want to take from those locations and that production design, and how much did you feel that you tried to put your stamp on this world?
I’ve learned that if you step into the Marvel universe, you are going to a different country, a world in and of itself that you must learn. You can’t just say, ‘I’m not going to learn this language.’ You need to understand the vocabulary. It’s a language that I’ve enjoyed learning that I didn’t know that much about. With that, you always bring your own perspective, history, and artistic vision to it.
Marvel is very receptive to that, and they welcome that. So that’s something I found wonderful and reassuring because I didn’t know what to expect. The characters are so complex, and the fan base is so huge that they need to integrate it all. It took a little learning curve for me to get used to that, but it’s important.
Does it ever feel super challenging? With such a huge fan base to please that you know you’re working for?
Yeah. There’s a high bar, and the Netflix series was so popular that we all felt we had pretty big shoes to fill coming into this. So that challenge and that opportunity is why we’re all here. I feel like we succeeded very much. I think it’s a successful series without replicating it. It feels like it should be a continuation of the Netflix series. I think it’s a more mature version because time has passed, they’re older, things have changed, and it’s ‘Born Again.’ So, we want it to feel different. At the same time, much attention is paid to ensuring we have guardrails regarding Marvel history and what’s expected from our characters.
Is there some quality about the character of Matt Murdock or Daredevil that you wanted to come across in your production design?
For sure, and that goes with every character. You start with, ‘How can I make a silent movie about these characters and convey something with visuals, not words, about them?’ And so with Matt, it was essential for me, what with the whole show, to have it feel grounded and based in reality because I think that helps the character development. The more accurate you can create these worlds, the stronger people believe that there are superpowers, that they’re real, in a way.
So you have a blind character with these abilities to have extrasensory perception, in a way. For me, establishing this world where you are very clear that it’s a visual world. His apartment and office have expansive views, large windows, and many textures, all things he can’t see. He can feel the textures, but we, as an audience, see him in a place where he’s not experiencing this. Whether it’s conscious or not, I think a viewer will sense a contradiction. So that was important, having different textures and having his world feel tactile even though he’s not walking around touching every surface because he’s figuring out where to go. We, as an audience, see all that and feel this.
(Wilson Fisk’s) office feels almost too ornate or too pristine for a crime boss. It comes across like he shouldn’t be there. Is that something you intended? What did you want to bring out about his character?
That’s exactly what we wanted to convey that he’s in a super uncomfortable place. (With) his new place as mayor, he’s dropped into a world that’s not his own, and we made a point to make sure that the furniture felt a little smaller for him. He’s never comfortable.
Both characters have evolved. Now that we see them again, they are trying to shed their past and start anew. It’s a little uncomfortable for both of them, in a way.
What was the shooting process like? Were you primarily working with these exterior locales of New York, virtual backgrounds, and sets you’re designing?
We shot it in New York and not another place to capture New York, and we wanted it to feel very much like a New York show. Being grounded in New York, the way New York is now… the old Hell’s Kitchen is no longer now. It’s regentrified and revitalized itself, so we wanted to capture that. That feeling like, ‘There are a few spots that retain the same old Hell’s Kitchen feel, but New York has changed, and it’s a different place”… We shot on the streets all the time, but we also had to build many sets.
This is one Marvel project where props and locations are integral to the fight choreography. Did you spend much time talking with the writers, directors, or fight choreographers about designing those sequences and locations?
Yes, absolutely, and you can’t avoid having those conversations. I can come up with all kinds of designs for a set, but they have to work on all these other levels, lighting, fighting, and acting…
The process is really that we get the scripts, I start coming up with ideas for a set, do a rendering of the set, send that off, everyone looks at it, everyone makes comments, we change things, and then we start doing working drawings for sets, assuming everyone approves of them.
With those working drawings — we’ll do complex models you can walk through. With the stunt coordinator, with a camera, and with lighting, we’ll all walk through those models with the directors and say, ‘What’s working, what isn’t working?’ and make changes. The process takes a while. It starts with a concept of what the set should look like, and it goes through many different revisions and always ends up better because you’ve got all these talented people who are contributing. It’s an enjoyable process. Sometimes, it’s highly stressful because the clock is ticking, but that’s what we do.
Now that the season one episodes are finished and releasing on Disney+, how do you feel to be on the other side of that season?
It took a long time for us to get the first season finished, and like all good things, they have their own time. Finally, when it came out, we were already working on season two, and the reaction was so positive and strong that we were all excited to be working on the season.
First, we have to do better this season, and I think we will. Everyone is so excited… because the season came out and it was so good, I think everyone on the team is just like, ‘Okay. Now we gotta top it.’
Daredevil: Born Again is available to stream on Disney+. Episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays through April 15.
