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When the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law trailer debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, fans got quite the shock with the reveal that Charlie Cox is reprising his role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the series. This is incredibly exciting–especially when you consider the upcoming standalone series for the character on Disney+. However, Cox’s portrayal of Daredevil so far has been decidedly serious and often dark. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, on the other hand, is a half-hour sitcom about a lawyer who just happens to turn into a big, green rage monster. How, exactly, do those two pieces fit together?
According to showrunner Jessica Gao, it wasn’t as hard as you might think. “It’s so fun to take these characters that you’ve only seen in these kinds of very serious dramatic roles and situations and [bring] them into our show where they get to kind of take a break from all that because in our show the universe isn’t going to end,” she told GameSpot. “It’s slice of life. It’s daily life. It’s like a chill Tuesday. They don’t have to be so heightened because of that. They get to live a regular life, and we all get together to explore a different side of them when they’re not in these heightened situations.”
Not surprisingly, Cox had a pretty good understanding of how to fit his version of Daredevil into the show. “Charlie is so wonderful,” Gao continued. “He has such reverence for the character that he’s played, and he loves being Daredevil so much. He was definitely part of the conversation. And I don’t think we did anything that made him feel like we were betraying the character.”
The showrunner was also quick to add, “And I would love to remind people that in the comics, Daredevil is light and funny and quippy.”
Still, as executive producer and director Kat Coiro explains, it still took some adjustments–not just from Cox, but from all of the familiar MCU faces.
“All of the existing MCU characters, even the ones like [Hulk] who had played in comedic MCU before, were stepping into a new genre,” she said. “Even though there’s a lot of comedy in the MCU, this really is the first half-hour situational comedy style show. And so the biggest question from all of them was like, ‘Am I going too far?’ And I’d always say, ‘No, absolutely not! Go further!’ Just giving them the space to have fun with it and not feel like it has to be serious. And it doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t there. It doesn’t mean we don’t have moments of gravity and action and suspense, but we do allow ourselves to play in the comedic sphere.”
So while, at first glance, Daredevil might seem like a tonal mismatch for the show, it’s easy to see why Cox might want to give Matt Murdock a bit of a break and let him play around in a bit more of a fun work environment. After all, there’s plenty of time to get sad and dark again when Daredevil: Born Again hits Disney+ in 2024. In the meantime, She-Hulk smashes onto the scene Thursday, August 18.
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