Marvel’s The Punisher was no doubt, the most violent Netflix MCU show taking place within the Defenders Universe. It’s Frank Castle’s standalone series, did we expect anything less from the character who hung men from meat hooks and fired off buckshot rounds into an Irish mobster’s face in Daredevil season two? The show hadn’t even premiered yet, when it was pulled from NYCC and its release was delayed to the Las Vegas shooting, because viewers and executives knew how violent the series was.
Despite all this, the violence in The Punisher has a purpose. Emmy nominated stunt coordinator Thom Williams sat down to discuss some of the most brutal scenes in the show. While there were some scenes in the Punisher that required you either look away, Williams stated that these scenes helped moved the story along and, “it’s not just going out and finding random people and beating the crap out of them, or blowing things up,” he says. “It’s not action for the sake of action.”
In an interview with SYFY, Williams talks over several of the most well-known scenes in the Punisher season one and how he liked to let the actors do most of their own work, allowing the talent to take over. Williams also talks about brainstorming upcoming scenes and that the prep took the longest to do, before allowing Jon Bernthal, Ben Barnes, and whoever was in the scene give it there all.
One of my favorite parts in this interview was when the interviewer asked Williams what he did to prepare for scenes. He recalls a moment when he had to tie Jon Bernthal up before the Thanksgiving nightmare sequence in episode 6.
“I was helping tie Jon to the chair, the one he has to struggle in but not get out of. And Jon is really good about getting into character, and I’m sitting there next to him, cinching his wrists down, and he wants me to cinch them down really tight, so he could really feel it and get into it. So as I cinched it down, I whispered in his ear, “There’s nothing you can do.” And he looked at me, and just got this horrified look on his face, but he knew exactly what I was doing and just rolled with it. He ended up hugging me and thanking me later: “That was a nice little kick-start.”
Talk about prep-work. While that scene was horrifying and depressing, the coup de gras is in the season finale. At this point, Frank Castle has found out about Billy Russo’s betrayal and the two engage in this heart-pounding, really well-choreographed fight scene around a carousel. Russo was ‘Billy the Beaut’ the whole season, but as Frank tore his face down a broken and shattered mirror, he was forcefully thrown into a reality where he is to become the well-known villain Jigsaw.
Williams goes on to explain that in that scene, they were working with real glass and so that every shard needed to be secured properly so none of it would fall off during the “cheese-grater” scene. There was high-density foam involved and a face mold for Barnes to ensure that while we the audience saw Frank destroying Billy’s face that nothing actually happened to the actor or his stunt double.
If you can stomach it, you can watch the scene aforementioned above. I’ve watched The Punisher season one countless times and I still have to look away!
For the whole interview, please check out the link attached, and help show Thom Williams as he’s nominated for an Emmy for his stunt coordination on The Punisher.
A girl with too many fandoms to count.
