Holding out for a hero: Charlie Cox goes from Marvel stardom to RTÉ drama
Charlie Cox: the star of new RTÉ drama 'Kin'.
It’s not every day that you find yourself explaining to a Marvel Superhero about the furore that Dryrobes caused in some Irish swimming spots but that’s exactly what I’m doing on a Zoom call with actor Charlie Cox.
The star of Daredevil is soon to be back on our screens playing Michael in crime drama Kin, which airs both on RTÉ and AMC in the US this autumn.
He spent seven months living in Dublin with his family while filming the show and like the rest of the capital’s population developed a real love for swimming in Vico, so much so that co-star Emmett Scanlan bought him one of the controversial Dryrobes for Christmas.
“I remember that you couldn’t go outside of your five kilometers. I was obsessed with swimming in Vico, which was a little bit more than 5k from where I was, so I would wing it occasionally and get away with it. Sorry, it was a little naughty, if I’m honest. I absolutely loved it. I did the Christmas day swim, and my daughter came in, in January, she’s only four! She got a round of applause.”
Between lockdowns and sneaky swims, Charlie enjoyed his time in Dublin. Bubbled up in an apartment block in the city with cast members Emmett Scanlan and his family, and Sam Keeley, meant that even during a pandemic, the family never felt isolated. Charlie and Emmett Scanlan developed a firm friendship while filming and the two bonded over gym visits and hilarious birthday presents, including a jigsaw of Charlie’s face that he had made for Emmett.
“My whole family were with me, and we were in the same building as two or three of the other cast members, so we had this little community, we were all in a bubble, and it was delightful. We would have Sunday lunches at my apartment, and we’d all get together. It was such a nice time. We were working, so we didn’t feel the isolation too much, but obviously that comes with all of the trepidation and possibility that someone may get sick, and what’s that going to look like? Bizarrely, my son who was about one at the time was, I think, the only member of the cast and crew or family who got it. He’s the only one that doesn’t leave the house, but somehow, he tested positive at some point, and no one else did.”
Kin is RTÉ’s highly anticipated new drama and in it Charlie plays Michael, the younger brother of a Dublin crime family who for the majority of his life has been the enforcer. We meet him as he’s released from prison where he’s been for eight years.
“What we wanted to do with Michael is give the impression that we’re meeting a different man from eight years ago, but we don’t get to see that person. That was really what intrigued me about the role, how do you present someone who the audience only get to meet in this new moment, but we’re very much hinting towards the fact that he’s changed or at least has had some sort of a change of heart.” The trailer is dark and brooding and with Aidan Gillen also starring, the show will inevitably draw comparisons to both Love/Hate and to certain high profile Dublin crime families, something Charlie is keen to say they weren’t trying to portray.
“I just hope that that isn’t a disappointment somehow if people are excited about a potential presentation of a real-life family that’s very accurate. That’s not what we’ve done. Love/Hate was tremendous. I watched it all the way through and I’m excited for people to see Aidan’s character because he’s so different to his character in that show. You know Aidan who probably can work whenever he wants, wherever he wants, you can see why he agreed to do it because it is different enough.”
Living and working in the US, Charlie’s life is quite removed from the crime families of Dublin’s inner city and one place he found inspiration was by listening to local crime podcasts.
“I was listening to a lot of Nicola Tallant’s podcasts, and I came across one about an Estonian hit-man. She talks about this guy’s hobbies. He was fascinated with sailing and was also into hiking and stuff.
"I think when I listened to that, it helped me understand the show that we were trying to make, because what we’re trying to do is say, ‘Right. These families exist, and they live their lives presumably under the pressure and the fear of any minute now they or one of their loved ones could be clipped as we say’.
"But at the same time, they’re real families and they have real lives and they have hopes and dreams and all of those things. That’s just an interesting kind of irony, I think. We wanted to present that family as a family and allow the audience to see how they feel about that. I think you will inevitably at times, emotionally ally yourself with them and then you’ll step back from it and go, ‘What’ but that’s the interesting challenge, I think.”
Another challenge for Charlie was getting the Dublin accent just right. It’s not his first time to pick up an Irish accent for a role — though his last one, Owen Sleater in Boardwalk Empire, was Northern Irish.
“Look, I take it very seriously but people from Crumlin aren’t going to buy it I don’t think. Because I know when someone’s doing my accent. Do you know what I mean? I find all accents incredibly tricky.
“I’m not one of those people that I can just pick it up like when I tell Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman jokes, I can’t do the accents. I’m not one of those people. Ironically, my career has been peppered with accents.
“Somehow, I’m the guy that keeps doing accents. I work very, very hard at it and I worked really hard with a couple coaches in Dublin predominantly, Poll Moussoulides, who I paid myself even before we started work on the show!
“I thought that the Northern Irish was going to help me more. I think, in retrospect, it ended up being something I was trying to get rid of, rather than it aiding me. But I got very good feedback from the cast and the crew and I haven’t had a tremendous amount of ADR [automated dialogue replacement] to do on it.
“What was really interesting is how people’s opinion on the accent is very subjective. Early on, there was, in one of the first days I was saying one word and Diarmuid Goggins, who was our director, and he’s from the northside, was like, ‘That doesn’t sound right’.
But then Clare Dunne, who is from the southside of Dublin was on set and she was saying, ‘Oh, no. That’s exactly right’. We’re talking about a few-mile radius. They were arguing back and forward about it. That just got, that’s too much for me to handle. I just do what I am told,” Charlie laughs.
“Actually, Emmett was telling me the other day, and obviously his accent is completely authentic, that he has more ADR than I do because there’s often moments where the Americans can’t understand what he’s saying. He’s had to kind of, like, slow it down a little bit!”
The day we’re speaking, the first trailer for Spiderman: No Way Home has just been released and I spent a lot of the morning watching grown men on social media comparing a photo of the hair on Charlie’s arm to a still from the trailer.
Marvel fans are obsessed with a Daredevil/Matt Murdock cameo in the new movie.
“One of my good friends in New York, who knows me really well texted me a clip from a leaked trailer that has me in it. I had to write back to tell him that it wasn’t real.
“Like you could clearly see it wasn’t real. This is a guy that knows me and he fell for it. I’m like, ‘Do you think I wouldn’t have told you?’
“There was a fan on the Kin crew. I came to work one day, and the rumour had come out that I was filming in Atlanta, and he asked me like it was a sensible question, and I was like, ‘I’ve been here every day with you, on set’ but I think he was so hopeful that he still was like, ‘Is it true?’; I had to say to him, ‘How would it be true?
“Even if I had a few days off, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. I’m not allowed to fly anywhere. What are you talking about?’ Did he think Captain America came to get me?” Still, funny moments aside it must be quite a lot to deal with knowing that a character you’ve portrayed means so much to so many people.
“I will start by saying the credit goes to Stan Lee. When the casting of that character works out it to some degree, and the fans get on board, that’s a huge relief, and also a huge honour.
“I feel very, very grateful that I was able to capture something that ties in with what the fans imagine Matt Murdock to be like. What our show did that hadn’t been done before was that we delivered a superhero show to an older audience. One of the things I certainly learned, I didn’t realise that if you grew up buying Daredevil comics, you don’t cease to become a huge Daredevil fan. You always are. It’s a bit like a football team. He’s your guy. He’s one of your guys, right?
“So the short answer is I feel very lucky that I got the opportunity, and that the scripts were so good, and the creators were so good, and every department top to bottom was so good at their job.
With Kin about to air and the excitement that surrounds a possible Daredevil/Spiderman cameo, Charlie is enjoying a well-earned break from work. Used to jetting off around the world the pandemic has changed things for a lot of actors.
“During the pandemic, we moved out of New York, and we’re living in rural Connecticut. It’s such a precious time with my children so I’m just being hyper careful about what I do say yes to. In the past, I love working so much and I love going to work and I love all the elements of my job, the travel and meeting new people and all that kind of stuff, but I just want to be careful that I don’t miss out on these precious years.
“My daughter is starting school and I just want to be around for all of that stuff. I’m waiting for something that is a passion project. I haven’t found it yet. I’d like to do some more theatre actually because then I could work and be with them.
“It’s a lovely life for an actor with a family because after you get out of rehearsals, you’re in the theatre by 7pm, so you got the whole day with the family, and then you get to miss the bath time and bedtime which is all the most painful element anyways,” he chuckles.
“My wife is a producer on Kin, and as a result, we were able to go as a family to Dublin. Had that not been the case, I wouldn’t have been able to do it because you couldn’t fly home even for the weekend because of the quarantine situation.
“If that continues to be the case, then the jobs that I choose are quite severely limited, I can’t go for six months and not see them, I’ve got to be able to get back and build a moment where I can go and spend a week with them and so that’s the consideration for sure. I’m hoping with the vaccines and in due course as the numbers hopefully dwindle that that will all change again, but that is obviously a bit of consideration.”
Of course, Charlie has one trick up his sleeve that lots of other actors don’t have, that might just help him get to movie sets a bit easier.
“Yes, I can always call Cap.”
- Watch Kin on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player; Sunday September 12, 9:35pm
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