Daredevil Star Charlie Cox Speaks Out on Unexpected Marvel Return: “I Thought It Was a Joke”

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige isn’t known for crank calls, but that’s what Daredevil actor Charlie Cox thought happened when the studio contacted him for a big-screen cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Three years after Netflix canceled Marvel’s Daredevil TV series after three seasons, effectively ending the Defenders-verse, Cox found himself back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Almost another year later, he returns to the small screen in Thursday’s episode of She-Hulk and is due to reprise the Matt Murdock role in Marvel Studios’ animated Spider-Man: Freshman Year and in the live-action revival Daredevil: Born Again for Disney+.

“I thought it was a joke or a prank,” Cox told CinePop ahead of She-Hulk‘s Daredevil episode. “I got a message from Kevin Feige’s assistant saying, ‘Can you call us back?’ I thought it might be for a charity event on account of Covid and everyone would attend. But I was asked if I wanted to be in Spider-Man, it was crazy.”

Cox added: “I was in the garden of my house, and my wife was sitting on the steps, looking at me and asking: ‘What’s going on?’ It was crazy. It’s a childhood dream, it was unbelievable.”

It wasn’t a joke or a prank. And on Thursday’s She-Hulk Episode 8 — which pits a red-and-yellow-suited Daredevil against superhero lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) — the Man Without Fear isn’t afraid to have a sense of humor.

“We were like, ‘This is our version,’ and it’s true for any character,” She-Hulk head writer Jessica Gao exclusively told ComicBook’s Phase Zero. “Like every character that we’ve used that exists in the MCU, it gets to be a little bit different on our show because you see them in very dramatic roles — these big, high-pressure, high-stakes kind of situations — but because our show is more of a slice-of-life, they can kind of take a break from that.”

Ahead of Matt Murdock’s rematch with the Kingpin Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) in Daredevil: Born Again, characters like Cox’s Daredevil “get to take a little bit of a comedy vacation.” 

“Of course, after our show, they get to go back to save the world, saving the universe, very serious, intense story,” Gao said. “But on our show, they get to just take a little break and when the universe is not at stake, like, ‘What’s going on with you?’ They get a chance to really explore a different part of their character because not everyone can be saving the world every minute of every day.”

Starring Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, Jameela Jamilas Titania, Ginger Gonzaga as Nikki Ramos, Josh Segarra as Augustus”Pug” Pugliese, Jon Bass as Todd, Renée Elise Goldsberry as MalloryBook, Tim Roth as the Abomination, and Mark Ruffalo as BruceBanner/Smart Hulk, new episodes of Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law are streaming Thursdays on Disney+.