To the delight of fans. Marvel Television expanded its partnership with Netflix by adding The Punisher to its growing line up of Marvel characters. The title character is played by Jon Bernthal. Fans might remember him as Shane Walsh from The Walking Dead. Jon made his critically acclaimed debut during Season 2 of Daredevil. He played a military trained vigilante who is hell bent on “punishing” the criminal elements that were involved in the murder of his family.
After accomplishing his goal of revenge, Frank Castle left Hell’s Kitchen. That’s the last we saw of him. However, Bernthal’s Punisher returns in his own series this November on Netflix.
MovieFone, caught up with Bernthal to get his take on the character.
It’s an interesting predicament. To put him 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.
Bernthal then went on to describe who he believes Frank is:
I think Frank is brutal. Frank is damaged. Frank is tortured. I think Frank, when he engages in violence, there’s something utterly satisfying and addictive for him to be doing that, and that may not be something that the audience can agree with or get behind. But I’ve always fought to preserve that, and I think that that’s a part of him. I think the pain and what’s behind the violence and the reason why he’s committing the violence, that’s a different story. I want to explore that, too.
Bernthal then talks about not wanting to make Frank too heroic:
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.
Jon Bernthal hit some pretty important points on the nature of Frank Castle. The beast we all have inside of us, wanting to be released against the world many of us feel is full of injustice.