Vincent D’Onofrio Was to Treat Hawkeye’s Kingpin the Same As Netflix’s Daredevil Version

The words canon and continuity are thrown about a lot around Marvel fandoms across social media. To date, Marvel Studios officials have yet to expressly state whether or not those shows once produced by Marvel Television reside in the same continuity as the films and Disney+ shows made by Marvel Studios. Case in point, Vincent D’Onofrio has now played Wilson Fisk in productions by both studios—and while it’s still not clear for sure, some can infer what’s going on based on quotes from the actor himself.

We recently caught up with D’Onofrio and the actor tells us his approach to the character this time around was the same as when he played Kingpin on Netflix’s Daredevil. “The process was to be treated exactly the same,” the actor tells us.

That’s when D’Onofrio says his conversations with Marvel Studios went similar to the ones he had with Marvel Television regarding the beloved villain.

“Early on in our first conversation, I was about his emotional life and that how I approached, how I figured out how to play the character in, Daredevil, and that I based my whole character on his emotional life. And that was how I needed to play him for Hawkeye,” the actor adds. “And they were just so excited that I said that, because it’s what they were thinking.”

In fact, D’Onofrio insists that’s really the only angle this character can be played from.

“I think that everybody realizes that the only way this character, as of now, stays interesting is if he has these, even if you make him stronger, as long as he’s always based that his foundation is his emotional life and the pain, everything comes through the pain that he went through as a child. Then we’ve got a character there, an interesting character,” he concludes.

All six episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+ while Spider-Man: No Way Home is exclusively in theaters.

What did you think of Hawkeye? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!

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