What does the devil’s voice sound like? A conversation with Vincent D’onofrio, Kingpin in “Echo”

Those who have followed the Marvel Cinematic Universe remember that in 2015 series appeared for Netflix with characters from the saga, among them “Daredevil”. What things make a series acclaimed? In this case, in addition to the action and a charismatic hero, there is the power of the villain to provoke a mixture of fear with admiration, and Vincent D’onofrio’s Wilson Fisk ‘Kingpin’ fulfilled this. His performance defeated any doubts in the audience through physical forcefulness, but also through something intangible.

In “Echo”, a Disney+ series that brings back the character, D’onofrio continues in full exercise of that disturbing Fisk voice, with which he gives orders, but always seems to hold back, as if he had a lump in his throat, on the verge of fury. “There is an emotional aspect behind that; When I invented his voice I looked into my emotional life and there is one particular event that I won’t be specific about that happened to me. And the voice comes through that, so there’s always a little bit of a fragile, emotional tone in his voice because of that, because it comes from a real emotion.“, said the actor in an interview with El Comercio.

In each of his scenes as Fisk, D’onofrio became an open wound, something not easy to achieve with a character with so much physical presence. Of all the scenes to depict him, the best may be his conversation with Matt Murdock in season 3 of “Daredevil”; prison talk that ended in blood.

Disney’s “Echo” is the story of Maya López (Alaqua Cox), a former career criminal who flees to her hometown after shooting Wilson Fisk (D’onofrio) in the face. But she didn’t do the job well, and now she will have to combine her personal and family interests with the return of the mobster, who loves her as if she were his daughter; a bond forged by violence.

“In ‘Echo’ you definitely get the sense that it’s a failed father-daughter relationship. And he wants her back in her life, as her second in line to the throne, so to speak.”said the actor via Zoom. “So [la trama] it’s her opposing that and him trying to convince her to stay by his side. At the same time she becomes very emotional, it becomes an iconic situation of the bad guy and the good guy, but with this kind of father-daughter emotional violence as a flavor. And physical violence too. It gets pretty intense.”.

In the comic, Maya López can replicate any action she sees, be it a fighting move, the performance of a musical instrument, or more. In the series, her powers will be different. D’onofrio highlighted the work of the protagonist, Alaqua Cox, who is deaf.

“In ‘Echo’ you definitely get the sense that it’s a failed father-daughter relationship. And he wants her back in her life, as her second in line to the throne, so to speak.”

Vincent D’onofrio

“She is very, very impressive. She can handle everything, all the scenes we did together. In some ways she did it naturally, in others she was very intense because of the type of emotions we were dealing with and I think that, if I had to define her in one word, she would be impressive. She is”, indicated the actor. “When we did ‘Hawkeye,’ I immediately saw that this was a very talented woman. And I just watched a long fight scene in one of the episodes and it’s incredibly violent and makes me think of scenes I’ve seen in the Netflix original series. She is conquering this character.”

The comparison with the Netflix series could be key in the tone of the new story which, from what this newspaper has seen, is far from everything Marvel has done on TV since Disney+ came out. And what about Fisk? What will he do? While D’onofrio didn’t want to be too specific, he did say that his character ““He is definitely going in a direction where he is a broken person trying to put himself back together.” Cryptic, but that’s also Wilson Fisk’s legacy.