“She played that so well”: We All Missed Daredevil: Born Again’s Most Nuanced Performance Amid Matt Murdock vs Wilson Fisk Madness
- Deborah Ann Woll's performance in episode 1 of Daredevil: Born Again has been lauded.
- The actress feels grateful for a call back after Daredevil canceled.
- Fans believe Deborah Ann Woll's performance was Emmy-worthy.
Marvel Television’s Daredevil: Born Again starring Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Margarita Levieva, and others, premiered with two episodes on Disney+. The series is the thirteenth television series in the MCU and is the revival and continuation of Daredevil, which premiered from 2015 to 2018 on Netflix.
The ongoing series references the Born Again comic book storyline by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. However, it does not adopt the exact storyline. The first season consists of nine episodes and is part of Phase Five, which will be followed by a second season with eight episodes. Upon release, the episodes received positive responses from the audience, and Deborah Ann Woll’s performance was appreciated.
Daredevil: Born Again star Deborah Ann Woll talks about her return
Actress Deborah Ann Woll plays Karen Page on the show, and after Netflix canceled Daredevil, she was worried about her character’s future in the franchise. She appeared on Joe Quesada’s podcast in 2020, where she confessed that she kept wondering whether she’d get to work again or not, and noted that it’s scary.
Talking about the same with EW, the actress said,
We think of careers as being a ladder. You keep stepping up and up, but acting isn’t like that; most art forms are not. There are peaks and valleys. You have a peak doing a show like Daredevil, and then inevitably you’re probably going to have a valley, and that’s a tricky time.
She shared that she and Elden Henson, who plays Foggy Nelson on the show, were not exactly a part of Born Again until Marvel revamped their approach. Woll added that she understood that the business is too enormous for anything to be personal. The actress mentioned,
I’ve always found it to be much more of a pleasant experience to champion the people that I care about and love. It’s so rare for something to come back in a significant way after so many years. So being asked after the fact was just icing on the cake.
Little did the audience know that the first 16 minutes of Episode 1 of Daredevil: Born Again is not only going to be a reunion of Matt Murdock, Karen Page, and Foggy Nelson. But it’s also the moment when Bullseye shoots and kills Foggy Nelson, who dies in the arms of blood-splattered Karen.
The entire shot is filmed in one continuous, unbroken shot, reminding the audience of the filmmaking moment of Daredevil. The actress shared that the sequence is going up on YouTube and will stay there for the rest of eternity. She said that it’s going to be a moment that is going to stay in the minds of the characters and audience for a long time, especially her, pointing out that Nelson dies in her arms.
Fans dub Deborah Ann Woll’s performance on Daredevil: Born Again as ‘Emmy-worthy’
With just two episodes out on Disney+, fans who had waited for the cast of Daredevil to return to the screen for seven long years were not going to let the appreciation go away easily.
Everyone appreciated Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock’s performance, but fans on Reddit shifted their focus to Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page.
Nelson dies in her arms, and it’s one horrifying visual for someone close to the person. But Woll’s acting proved why she is an important member of the cast. A Reddit user wrote that they loved Karen Page’s acting as well when Matt Murdock tried to kill Bullseye because she knew that she had lost Matt at that moment. Another user mentioned,
She played that so well; the worry that it was Matt on the ground, the relief that it wasn’t coupled with the realization that something had fundamentally changed… She pretty much communicated with facial expressions because she could barely talk.
Fans online have not only appreciated her performance in that particular scene, but also dubbed it ‘Emmy-worthy.’ They mentioned that they already knew she was a great actress, but in that scene, she killed it. Some expressed disappointment with the fact that the actress has yet to receive her dues from the industry.
During the discussion on the Reddit thread, fans just expressed what a brilliant actress Deborah Ann Woll is and how much they wish that she’d get credit for her work. A user mentioned that her range is incredible, with another adding that it takes an amazing and talented actor to express pain.
Daredevil: Born Again is streaming on Disney+.
