Deborah Ann Woll on Fighting Wilson Fisk, ‘Co-Parenting’ Hell’s Kitchen, and Karen Page’s Ultimate Fate in Daredevil: Born Again
The longtime 'Daredevil' star talks about her character's evolution and being a 'conduit' for the audience.
“What would happen to me if I was constantly surrounded by this corruption and violence and all the things that happened [throughout the Daredevil shows]?”
That’s the question Deborah Ann Woll finds herself asking on behalf of the audience as Karen Page, close friend to Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock and partner at the Nelson, Murdock & Page law firm, in Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2.
Woll, who spoke to Rotten Tomatoes ahead of Tuesday’s two-episode drop on Disney+, returns full time to play her character after a handful of appearances in season 1, and she sees herself as the “conduit” to the audience. Her life has been surrounded by the likes of Daredevil/Matt Murdock, the Kingpin/Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), and the Punisher/Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), and from what we’ve seen, this may be the darkest iteration of Daredevil yet.
Co-Parenting Hell’s Kitchen
As an actor, Woll takes the responsibility of being an audience proxy seriously. And as Karen, it means she must be the “bravest version of us” and jump into the battle even without superpowers.
The first few episodes of Born Again: Season 2 prove Karen is making that leap. She’s now Matt’s equal in the emerging resistance against Fisk’s mayorship of New York. Although, as Woll points out, “She was always putting herself out there, doing the work, breaking and entering — all of the things that Karen has done all this time. It’s always been about her own goals and objectives and ambitions for fixing the world and taking care of these 10 blocks of Manhattan that she’s responsible for.”
But this time, “it’s just her and Matt, and they’re the only people who they can really trust and really count on.” Additionally, the pair have embraced, at long last, a romantic aspect to their dynamic, although Woll was quick to note Karen remains steadfast in pushing back against him when necessary. “It’s kind of a given that they’re going to just say how they feel, they’re going to contradict each other, and that’s okay,” she said. “They might get angry, but that is an accepted part of this relationship.”
Woll continued, “They have their own goals, but I think we worked in three or four moments over the season where they almost come to the realization of something at the same time, that they’re working in such sync and they’re sharing so much information with one another that they’re both kind of like, ‘Well, is this what’s happening? Oh, oh my God, that’s what’s happening!’ They reach the conclusion simultaneously and then Karen goes, ‘Okay, I’m going to go work on this aspect. You go work on that aspect. We’ll meet back together.’”
“I’ve loved that co-parenting of Hell’s Kitchen that feels really earned and really wonderful and yet still with conflict,” she said.
A Foundation of Trust and a Need for Violence
One example of this: Karen’s move to kidnap a particular Anti-Vigilante Task Force agent in Episode 3. “This is not a character anymore who needs to be like, ‘Well, should I do this or not?’ She’s going, ‘No, this is the right move.’”
And although Matt might “grumble about it a little bit, it’s effective.” It also stands as proof that they can trust each other.
“If Matt’s going to go on a boat and it’s going to get it blown up, she has to just trust that he’s going to do the best that he can to save himself and as many people as possible,” Woll said. “And he has to trust that if she’s going to go out and do this investigation, that she’s going to find the right information and trust the right people and kidnap the right AVTF people.”
The first three episodes also make clear that Karen is quicker to use some violence. Asked if this is her working out some grief from the past 10 years or even Foggy Nelson’s (Elden Henson) death at the beginning of Born Again: Season 1, Woll said, “It’s almost like because [the Fisks] crossed that line first, it gave her permission.”
[The following two paragraphs include SPOILERS from the comics.]
Of course, readers of the Daredevil comics know Karen’s fate in the Marvel Comics Universe. In a recent Daredevil podcast episode, showrunner Dario Scardapane even likened the death of Foggy to the shock of Karen’s end in the comics. For fans familiar, it always charges Karen’s bolder moves with a certain tension. Woll appreciates that the uncertainty of her fate informs the show’s version of the character.
“One thing about shows like this is that you can get ‘plot armor,’” she explained. “It’s hard to suspend your disbelief that the main character or a character like Karen Page is ever going to actually die. But the fact is, because Karen dies in that book and we know that that’s canon and we know that it’s a very big storyline to follow through… I think that keeps us a little on edge and a little walking on eggshells. And it’s the same for me where I’m like, ‘At any moment this could happen.’ I think that’s good. It keeps us engaged. It keeps the stakes high every single moment.”
Unmasking Karen Page
Not everything in Karen’s life is so intense, though, as exemplified by the scene in which she reminisces with BB Urich (Genneya Walton) about her uncle Ben (Vondie Curtis-Hall), a character from Netflix’s 2015 series Daredevil who also helped launch Karen on her journey and, ultimately, lost his life in the struggle against Fisk. “He was such a huge part of that first season and the Daredevil canon and story over the long run,” she said.
Reaching back to that story point also reminded Woll where Karen started — a backstory dramatized in a Season 3 episode that revealed some of the character’s lowest points and greatest mistakes. She had a clear understanding of how it impacted the character from her first appearance on the show. “What we were playing with Karen in some of those earlier seasons is this mask, this hiding; that she is wearing a mask in her life as much as Daredevil is,” she explained.
“There is a part of her that doesn’t feel like she is good enough for this world. There’s a part of her that feels like she escaped the system and she can’t let that happen ever again because she has to atone for these wrongs that she has done,” she continued. “So much of what we see of Karen can be that mask, and then it gets dropped every once in a while when she’s with Frank Castle, when she’s challenging Matt or Foggy. And I just like that every season it feels like a little bit more of that mask drops away.”
That change from the person who froze when she first encountered Daredevil is something Woll thinks is organic across the collective five seasons of both Daredevil shows. “There is something to evolving a character over several episodes and… several years that is a really unique experience. To have done it over 10, 11, going on 12 years of story, there are not going to be very many people that can say that they’ve taken a character through that kind of journey. And so I’m really privileged to be able to.”
How It Started and How It’s Going
Remembering the early days of that first Daredevil season, though, she noted one big change is the expectation of what it can be. Back then, it was the third scripted show Netflix launched, and it was an early entry in the modern superhero TV show genre.
“It’s a little less scrappy [now]. We know people like it and people like superhero shows,” she said. “My joke used to be: ‘Oh, I’m just on this little web series.’ Coming back, there’s a lot more confidence from everyone involved. Obviously, we had this enormous fan outpouring. That’s a big reason why we’re back.”
Nonetheless, some similarities remain between the Netflix series and Born Again. “We’re still doing the kind of thoughtful, realistic, grounded-acting work and storytelling,” she explained, “while having the support and budget and ambitions of a larger company who knows that this formula is working. That’s been exciting to marry the two.”
Since Woll is a well-known Dungeon & Dragons player and dungeon master, we had to ask her if the experience feels akin to a long D&D campaign. “It always does a little bit, because as an actor on TV specifically, they’re writing the scripts as you go,” she replied. “When you join a movie, you have the whole script, you know everything, you can kind of go in with that full arc developed, but TV, you only get scripts as you’re filming and as it’s happening. So you are kind of like, ‘Great, let’s see. I know who I am. Let’s find out who I am in these different scenarios.’
“And that does have very much a D&D campaign vibe, more so certainly than theater or a film, just because you find out what happens as much as an audience member as you are an actor,” she said.
Season 2 of Born Again is just in its opening acts, and so much could happen between now and the finale to shake the foundations of the program. But we hope Karen will survive it all to prove, once again, that she is all of us and, of course, a better person than she believes herself to be.
Daredevil: Born Again: Season 2 is currently streaming on Disney+.
