Jon Bernthal Fought To Keep The PUNISHER From Being Too Heroic And Likable

In a new interview, Jon Bernthal states that he didn't want to portray a Punisher that was too heroic and wanted his Netflix series to be bold enough to make the audience unsure of who to root for...

While some folks are ready to signal the end of Marvel TV side of the MCU due to a rare misstep in Iron Fist, it's quite possible that the ship could be righted fairly quickly- first, with The Defenders and then right after that, Jon Bernthal's The Punisher . Speaking of the latter, what Bernthal tells Moviefone about his upcoming solo Netflix series should intrigue even the most jaded of MCU fans.

“It’s an interesting predicament. To put [the Punisher] as the central character is interesting, I think that my big struggle with him is that one of my biggest kind of things that I’m always fighting for on set is, I always want to preserve the essence of Frank, and have the right and be bold enough to really turn my back on the audience, and not do things to win the audience’s favor, but rather stay true to the character and the essence of who he is.

So I think that’s the real challenge: being bold enough to not make him too heroic, at least ‘heroic,’ is important to me. That being said, I think there’s Frank Castle inside of everybody, I think being a father and being a husband, he’s a character that I deeply empathize with.”

The Punisher is currently without an exact release date but it will be the next Marvel Netflix collaboration to follow after The Defenders miniseries. Not much is known about the series but Ben Barnes is set to portray Bily Russo aka Jigsaw although it's currently unknown whether he'll become the disfigured crime boss familar to Marvel readers in the show's first season. The 13-episode series began filming last October in Brooklyn and recentl wrapped this past April.