Philip J Silvera Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images Philip J Silvera has spent a few bone-crunching few years in Hell’s Kitchen as a key part of Daredevil: Born Again behind-the-scenes team.
Silvera, a stunt veteran of the original Netflix Daredevil series, was promoted to action director on Born Again season two, overseeing the design and shoots if its signature fight sequences.
“The goal is to do feature film on a TV timeframe,” he says of the series, which stars Charlie Cox as the hero and Vincent D’ONofrio as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. Silvera doesn’t want the fights to be about punching and kicking, but about character and emotion (though there’s plenty of punching and kicking, too).
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With the latest season in the rear view mirror, The Hollywood Reporter asked Silvera to break down some of his favorite sequences.
Diner Fight (season two, episode four, “Gloves Off.”)
Silvera had already moved on from the Netflix Daredevil show to work on Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate when Wilson Bethel joined the fold as Bullseye, and Silvera was disappointed he never got to work with the actor. He made up for that with Born Again, including this sequence in which the man who can turn anything into a weapon wreaks havoc in a diner.
“We’re always fighting the clock on these sequences,” says Silvera whose second unit team had just one day to do 57 setups and nearly 80 shots.
So some ideas went by the wayside, including a section with a gun. To save time, they decided to lean into the fact that Bullseye doesn’t need firearms to be lethal, and instead think up strange objects he could use in the diner.
“It became about, ‘What are the weirdest things that lean into Wilson Bethel’s psychology of the character?” says Silvera. That included using a straw to shoot out a toothpick. “We knew we needed something outrageous to start for scene,” he says, noting the idea originally was for it to be a spitball.
The Prison Break One Shot (season two, episode three, “The Scales and the Sword.”)
The scene, in which Daredevil breaks out the Swordsman (Tony Dalton) and others from a detention center run by the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, was not initially planned as a one-shot. But after seeing the plans that Silvera and his team cooked up, Marvel’s Brad Winderbaum, executive producer Sana Amanat and showrunner Dario Scardapane upped the ante by asking him to turn it into a oner. (In this case, it was stitched together to look like a oner.)
“We made sure we were following something very specifically, whether it would go to a guy getting hit or, or a baton being thrown,” Silvera says of the sequence, shot over around two-and-a-half days. “Each shot became a little mini movie and a story we had to tell on its own.”
Some of the more classic Daredevil scenes, such as an Oldboy-inspired hallway fight in season one of the Netflix show, involve the hero fighting through exhaustion. In this case, they flipped the script, and focused on Swordsman battling fatigue after being imprisoned. Silvera is especially fond of a moment in which the Swordsman uses Daredevil’s batons.
“I love when we get to bring these characters in the Marvel universe to a street level world,” says Silvera. “Now we’re playing with his style a little grittier. “
Jessica Jones and Daredevil vs. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force (season two, episode six, “Requiem”)
Creating Jessica Jones’ (Kristen Rytter) power moves required 12 rig setups in a single day, with Silvera working closely with his head rigor Tim Garris from Action Factory.
“We wanted to lean into her strength quite a bit more,” says Silvera. “She grabs someone, you felt it. If she hit someone and sent them flying, you felt it.”
A small, subversive touch he appreciated, was that Jessica busts through a wall, and Daredevil calmly walks in through the door: “Normally, Daredevil’s, is the one that comes in being all loud and crazy.”
Daredevil vs. Wilson Fisk (season two, episode six, “Requiem.”)
“One of the key things about Daredevil‘ sequences is that everything comes from a place of emotion when we design these fights — never punches and kicks,” says Silvera. “It’s so many conversations on who the characters are and where they at.”
In this case, D’ONofrio Wilson Fisk is reeling from the death of his wife, Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), and blames himself. Daredevil, meanwhile, doesn’t want to engage with the fight until he is forced to.
“When Vincent is in control of the sequence, we have a very steady handheld moment and then when Daredevil’s moving around, we go back to this in your face handheld moment,” says Silvera of the camera language. He also took inspiration from the “Devil’s Reign” run of comics by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Marco Checchetto: “It’s the iconic moment where Daredevil wraps his baton around Kingpin’s head.”
Moving forward, there’s no rest for the weary. Silvera and his team are already working on season three, currently in production. Says the action director: “I think everyone’s going to be surprised with the way we’re leaning into the return of certain characters.”
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