Maxance Vincent
One of the main differences between Daredevil: Born Again and the original series on Netflix is in its decision to move away from Hell’s Kitchen to the greater city of New York, as Matt Murdock rebuilds his life following the death of his best friend and legal partner, Foggy Nelson, at the beginning of the first episode. In that regard, the city of New York becomes a much bigger character, in its own right, as it was when the original show aired, and it’s something Production Designer Michael Shaw thought about when creating the look of the series, as he discusses with Awards Radar on Zoom:
“Shooting in New York, that’s not something Marvel does a lot. So we really wanted to make sure that, if we’re going to be shooting in New York, we had to capture what New York is.” That meant, for certain sequences, “finding pockets of New York where we could shoot that still hadn’t been touched by gentrification” when representing the port of Red Hook, which Wilson Fisk wants to revitalize, as one of the show’s major plot points.
It’s no secret that the series underwent a creative overhaul during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which led to the hiring of Dario Scardapane as showrunner, alongside Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead to direct many episodes. In working with the three, Shaw explained that the crew “were all intent on creating something that had a high production value and was cinematic. Justin and Aaron are very experimental filmmakers and brought a lot of interesting shots and things that are not in the script. What kept happening is we would get the script, and as we progressed, they would come up with new ideas and new shots that really informed the rest of the season, which were very powerful and told the story without words.”
The collaboration with each department was crucial for the show’s success, with the Production Designer stating, “We had a lot of freedom to make something that was new and that wasn’t necessarily the Netflix version. Everyone at Marvel, from the top down, wanted this fresh energy. If audiences haven’t seen the Netflix show, that’s fine, because they could get hooked. And I’ve talked to so many people who have never been Marvel people who suddenly were like, “This is great. I love this”. Now they’re going back and checking out the Netflix series.”
There was a lot more to talk about in our audio conversation, seen below, including the process that went into designing Matt’s apartment to fit with the latest story developments, The Punisher’s lair, Fisk’s mayoral office, and Muse’s underground compound.
You can listen to the full interview below and see all episodes of Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ today:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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