After making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the second season of Daredevil, Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle is set to take centre stage in his own series later this year as Marvel and Netflix unleash The Punisher. And, during an interview with Moviefone, Bernthal has been speaking about taking the lead in his own show, as well as revealing that he strove to remain true to the character and not make him “too heroic”.
“It’s an interesting predicament. To put [The Punisher] as the central character is interesting, I think that my big struggle with him is that one of my biggest kind of things that I’m always fighting for on set is, I always want to preserve the essence of Frank, and have the right and be bold enough to really turn my back on the audience, and not do things to win the audience’s favor, but rather stay true to the character and the essence of who he is,” said Bernthal. “So I think that’s the real challenge: being bold enough to not make him too heroic, at least ‘heroic,’ is important to me. That being said, I think there’s Frank Castle inside of everybody, I think being a father and being a husband, he’s a character that I deeply empathize with.”
SEE ALSO: Description of The Punisher footage shown at San Diego Comic-Con
As yet, there’s no word on a release date for The Punisher, although there has been talk that it will hit Netflix in November. If so, perhaps we’ll get a trailer this week to coincide with the arrival of The Defenders?
The Punisher features a cast that includes Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle), Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page), Ben Barnes (Billy Russo), Jason R Moore (Curtis Hoyle), Michael Nathanson (Sam Stein), Daniel Webber (Lewis Walcott), Amber Rose Revah (Dinah Madani), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Micro), Jaime Ray Newman (Sarah Lieberman), Paul Schulze (Bill Rawlins) and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in an as-yet-unrevealed role.
Originally published August 14, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
