“Daredevil: Born Again’s” Stunt Coordinator & Second Unit Director Philip Silvera on Big City Brawling

At the beginning of Season 1 of the Disney+ revival of the Daredevil storyline, Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel vigilante Matt Murdock/Daredevil is operating more or less as a yuppie. Matt has hung up his superhero suit to keep his heroics to the courthouse, working as a defense attorney and taking on clients pro bono when he believes in their innocence, but they can’t afford him. But with the murder of his friend and colleague, Foggy (Elden Henson), a cryptic mayoral run by his old nemesis Wilson Fisk, and the realization that a serial killer is on the loose, forces converge to push Matt to reconsider his path.

Helmed by showrunner Dario Scardapane, Daredevil: Born Again is a new iteration of the series that ran on Netflix until 2018. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprise their roles as Matt Murdock and Fisk, respectively, and the season focuses on traditional MCU themes of good versus evil, what we owe ourselves to the betterment of society, and how to defeat corruption. Both set and shot in New York, Born Again is an homage to the city, with Matt’s Hell’s Kitchen roots mentioned frequently, and action taking place in key locations ranging from local dives and a grand, historic bank to the city’s ubiquitous construction scaffolding. An internal war among different organized crime families brews in the background, while the tipoff of a killer on the loose comes from the discovery of graffiti made with human blood.

When Matt and his several nemeses go head-to-head, the punches land plausibly, whether they happen in a tenement stairwell or on a subway platform. Philip Silvera, the show’s second unit director and supervising stunt coordinator, worked to bring a bit of attitude from his own background as a native New Yorker to the series, while keeping the action unit sequences aesthetically aligned with the first unit’s.

The result is gritty and engaging, whether we’re in Matt’s law office or on the street. We spoke with Silvera about the design process behind the action, leveraging a sense of reality, and the camaraderie on set.

Do you approach the fighting action differently, considering Matt Murdock is blind?

There’s always a different way we approach each of the characters. Charlie has input, obviously, on how he does things, the writers, but also, it’s just the character from the books. Matt Murdock is blind, and yes, Daredevil is blind, but he has a sense of how he sees things differently. When we engage people, it’s not so much that he’s trying to find them, it’s leaning into his sensism in how we design the combat. He tastes blood in the air. We lean into those scenarios.

The fight sequences also feel grounded in reality. How do you create that gritty, gravity-based brawling?

My preference for design has always been to find out how I can make it relatable to the audience. Outside of what is written, for design on the action level, [one thing] is never taking it too outside the realm of believability, and then making the moments that really tie the audience to a certain type of pain or victory. I use American History X, the bite the curb moment, you don’t see it, but there’s a sense to it where you understand what’s happening. I think we look for those moments, whether good or bad. What is the moment that really pulls the audience in a very different way?

The city of New York is such a huge part of this show. How did you play it up?

Number one, I was born and raised in the South Bronx. I grew up in all parts of New York. The street-level attitude is something I tried to put into the action. As far as the visuals of New York, our DOP, Hillary [Fyfe Spera], and Dario [Scardapane, the showrunner], they have such a great sense of what part of New York they want to see, because it’s always been such a huge part of the show, the character. As far as the attitude, I always try to find a little street-level tone in our action, things I might have seen growing up here in New York.

Can you give me an example?

There are quite a few. One of my favorites is from Season 1, Episode 4, with Vincent D’Onofrio. His rage with the car door felt like a very New York, Goodfellas moment. What was one of yours?

I liked the mirroring of the fight between Fisk and Adam and Daredevil and Muse in Episode 6.

That was a purposeful design. My original conversation with Dario, when we had to reshoot the Muse sequence, was to tie it into Foggy’s death. You wanted to make it feel Matt was going to cross that line to become Daredevil again. As we were talking, we were walking in New York, and we’d just reviewed the Kingpin sequence, how well they could intercut with each other. So the beats were purposefully meant to mirror each other as far as the rage. Matt looked like he was going to cross the line in killing him, and Vincent made a promise that he couldn’t kill. Daredevil going into a blind rage was a moment Charlie wanted. I then found a way to reflect that with Vincent within his sequence. Then the raw beating was mirrored so that you could feel them both losing, and that they were going to cross that line together. They edited it very nicely together, but that was by design. That was probably one of my favorite sequences as second unit director.

The show has a really distinct aesthetic. Was it tricky to ensure that the second unit was shooting indistinguishably from the first unit?

It’s actually pretty seamless in the end. I have to quote [one of the season’s directors] Justin Benson. We were talking on set the other night and he said, what’s the secret between great first unit directors and action unit directors? And he says, friendship. We all get along so well. I love working with them and their creativity. Because we have such a close dynamic, talking to each other, it’s very easy for us to take what they’ve said on first shoot and establish it on second.

Featured image: (L-R) Daredevil/Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Devlin (Cillian O’Sullivan) Marvel Television’s DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2025 MARVEL.