Michael Gandolfini is basking in what one might call a full-circle moment. The American actor may be best known as the son of the late great James Gandolfini, but he’s steadily building a name for himself in projects of his own. He landed his first leading role as a younger Tony Soprano, the character that made his father famous, in 2021’s Many Saints of Newark. He appeared in Ari Aster’s unsettling odyssey, Beau Is Afraid, in 2023. And this year, he fulfills a goal he’s been quietly manifesting for nearly a decade, acting opposite one of his acting idols, Charlie Cox.
“I actually went to see Charlie in a play when I was probably 16,” Gandolfini tells Inverse. “I waited by the side door and got his autograph and a picture with him and told him, ‘I hope to work with you one day.’”
Fast forward to present day, and that interaction has become “one of the things me and Charlie joke about” often. After years of being “obsessed” with Marvel, Cox, and Daredevil, Gandolfini won a coveted role in Daredevil: Born Again, a revival of the Netflix series.
“When I got cast, he was the first person to FaceTime me,” the actor says of Cox. “He was like, ‘Dude, the amount of people who’ve said, “Oh, we’ll definitely work together one day,” and have never had it come true, but it finally happened [with you].’ It was really cool.”
Gandolfini’s Daniel Blake hasn’t yet shared a scene with Cox’s Matt Murdock, but in the penultimate episode of Daredevil: Born Again, he’s enjoying the fruits of his labor either way. Daniel has been laboring all season as the grunt-turned-right-hand-man of Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), but Episode 8 finally sees him breaking out of his shell — and strengthening the Kingpin’s claim to the throne. Ahead of Daniel’s “very complicated” turning point, Inverse spoke with Gandolfini about his character’s tricky balancing act, the “intoxicating” lure of absolute power, and the need for more human stories in the MCU.
Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again Episode 8.
Building Daniel Blake
Gandolfini’s journey to the MCU began with an appropriately secretive audition. “I didn’t even know it was for Daredevil,” he says. “I got sides that had nothing to do with anything character-wise… There was definitely no humor, no comedy — any of that.” He also had no idea who he was even auditioning for: all he had were dummy sides and “some notes about his loyalty and his gusto.”
It probably didn’t help that Daniel Blake, the character he’d eventually play, is one created specifically for Born Again. He has no counterpart in the Marvel comics — unless you count the Martian who disguises himself as a human astronaut to sabotage Earth in Tales to Astonish #25. The mystery of the character persisted even after Gandolfini got the offer to join Born Again.
“It was very weird to say yes,” the actor continues. “Signing on to the job and kind of being like, ‘I haven’t seen any scripts. I don’t know what the part is. Who is he? What is he?’”
The true nature of the character is much simpler than any feverish fan theories would have you believe. He’s not an alien in disguise, a Skrull, or a double agent, but an enthusiastic kid from Staten Island who, against all odds, finds himself working for newly-minted mayor Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). He’s introduced as your garden-variety personality hire, spurred by plenty of white male privilege and his willingness to turn a blind eye to the skeletons in Fisk’s closet. Despite his lack of qualifications, Daniel’s outspoken loyalty eventually endears him to the Kingpin — and in this week’s episode of Born Again, he’s inexplicably appointed as Fisk’s Deputy Mayor of Communications.
“He’s fully into Fisk and fully into the agenda,” Gandolfini explains. “He wants to make things better. But while an optimist, he’s also a people pleaser… So it becomes very interesting: Oh, you’re pleasing everybody. But now you have to begin to define who you are. You have to define what your stance on things are.”
Daniel’s dilemma is “very human,” almost standing in defiance of the tropes that have made the Marvel Universe such a spectacle. The invitation to “play against the tone” of the MCU was definitely a plus for Gandolfini, who took a grounded approach to building the character. He visited City Hall and shadowed New York’s real communication director. He lived in Staten Island for a week straight, and — like so many actors of his ilk — he made a Daniel Blake playlist.
“There’s a lot of Jack Harlow,” Gandolfini says, scrolling through his phone to give me the highlights. Staten Island’s Wu-Tang clan also features prominently, alongside Brooklyn’s Notorious B.I.G. and (perhaps to balance the scales) “a lot of weird, kinda cringey rap [that] makes you feel really like him.”
“People are going to lose their minds.”
He also did his due diligence where his future scene partners were concerned. “I definitely need to know people before I work,” he says. “I think it’s really, really crucial.” Knowing he’d be sharing a lot of screen time with D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, Gandolfini “immediately reached out.” The pair met for lunch a few months before production first began in early 2023.
Gandolfini was an earlier addition to the Born Again ensemble, cast before Marvel overhauled the show with new writers and directors. Original showrunners Matt Corman and Chris Ord were succeeded by Dario Scardapane, executive producer of Netflix’s The Punisher. He added three new episodes to those that’d previously been shot, fleshed out disjointed storylines with additional scenes, and rehired actors and crew from the original Netflix universe — most notably Jon Bernthal, who played the Punisher in Daredevil and his own self-titled spinoff.
Gandolfini may not share any scenes with Bernthal in Born Again, but the actors grew close on the set of Many Saints of Newark. “I was such a big fan of the Punisher,” Gandolfini says. “Jon’s now like… He’s Jon. He’s JB. He’s just my friend.”
He recalls meeting up with Bernthal just as he was locking down a deal with Marvel. “Me and JB, we went boxing — and this is when they were still talking to him about doing it,” Gandolfini says. “We were sort of both having this moment of like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to do this thing. What’s it going to be like?’ Trying to figure out where it was going… We talked about it quite a lot.”
He wouldn’t see Bernthal on the Born Again set until “the tail end” of production, but the pair were eager to make up for lost time. “I hung out in his trailer every day. When he was on set, we just hung out all the time.” He also got a front-row seat to Bernthal’s blistering return as the Punisher. “I know the insanity that awaits,” he says of the episodes to come. “People are going to lose their minds.”
Into the snake pit
Gandolfini likens Daniel’s recent promotion to placing “a kid in a candy store,” but there’s a sense of another shoe threatening to drop. “You basically put him in a snake pit, but he doesn’t realize he’s surrounded by snakes,” the actor says. He’s navigated the Fisk administration well enough, but one wrong move could see him going the way of Daredevil’s Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) or James Wesley (Tony Leonard Moore).
Watching Daniel fall deeper into Fisk’s clutches — and do so happily — creates a sense of foreboding that Daredevil fans know all too well. Corruption is Fisk’s modus operandi: Across three seasons of the Netflix series, we watched countless characters destroy their lives chasing Fisk’s promises. Daniel’s dynamic with Fisk fills us with dread because we know exactly how it could end for him. But being so close to the Kingpin is not without its benefits, either, which may make the risk worth it for Daniel.
“He’s quite an interesting character,” Gandolfini muses. “He represents this sort of very ambitious drive that a lot of [people in] our generation have, and he truly is an optimist. He believes in a better New York.” He wants to improve the city, but “he’s also sort of a networker. If he gets some perks, that’s not going to be bad. And what happens is he starts to get a lot of perks, right?”
“It’s putting on a power act that he really enjoys. That’s a really beneficial and intoxicating feeling.”
Daniel’s rapid ascension is only blunted by his relationship with BB Urich (Genneya Walton), the niece of Daredevil’s Ben Urich (who was murdered by Fisk) and host of The BB Report. From their first scenes together, it’s clear Daniel has a major crush on BB, but he also sees a kindred spirit in her. “She is someone who, like him, is very hungry,” Gandolfini says. “They see that in each other, but they come at it just from different points.”
Their dynamic may be one of the most complex in the series: BB sees Daniel as more of a window into Fisk’s administration, a regime she’s eager to tear down. Throughout the season she’s used Daniel to gain intel on Fisk — and Daniel, naive as he is, plays along in the beginning. But as he becomes what Gandolfini describes as “the cool guy,” he starts to take some of that power back.
“It’s putting on a power act that he really enjoys. That’s a really beneficial and intoxicating feeling,” he says. “He gets invited to cool stuff. His suits get a little nicer. He’s starting to have a little more swagger.” And though BB has betrayed his trust on several occasions, “he wants to share that with her.”
“Both are kind of begging for the other one to come on to the other side,” continues Gandolfini. “He likes her; he wants to be with her. And maybe if they aligned a little more, they could be together possibly.”
In the latest episode of Born Again, their subtle tug-of-war gains more friction. As Daniel tries to sway BB to Team Fisk, she’s trying to convince him of Fisk’s “total corruption.” They find themselves at an impasse at Fisk’s black-and-white gala; Daniel’s naivete (however performative) makes it impossible for BB to get through to him.
“Anytime someone is like, ‘This is a really big problem,’ he’s always like, ‘Why? Why is that a problem?’” Gandolfini says of Daniel. “BB is actually incredibly brave and a good friend for consistently making him remember, ‘You are on the bad side. You are not getting away with not hurting people.’ But it’s sort of like this unsung thing that he doesn’t want to talk about… It’s a fascinating dilemma.”
It also raises real questions about Daniel’s complicity. How much does he truly know about Fisk’s shadier dealings, about the people he’s murdered? Does he even care?
“I don’t even know if he really knows that he’s a part of the problem,” Gandolfini admits. Fisk’s misdeeds are “not even on his radar” until BB points them out — and even then, “that’s not important. What’s important is he wants to help New York; he wants to have a great life; he wants to have fun.”
There’s no telling how long the fun will really last, especially with both Daredevil and Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) emerging from the shadows to take Fisk down. But for Gandolfini, that’s part of the excitement. “It’s really good drama because he’s reaping benefits, but you sort of can see him digging his own grave,” the actor says wryly. “What’s going to happen to him? How deep is he going to get?”
Forging ahead
Daniel’s fate is one of many mysteries that may be saved for Born Again Season 2 — but those hoping to see more of Gandolfini won’t have to wait long. He’ll next appear in Warfare, director Alex Garland’s latest treatise on the horrors of war. The film was crafted in collaboration with Hollywood military adviser, U.S. Navy SEAL, and Iraqi war veteran Ray Mendoza, in an attempt to stitch together a particularly traumatic SEAL mission.
“It’s all from [Mendoza’s] memory. There’s no fiction at all,” Gandolfini says of the film. “There’s no score. It’s [presented in] real time.” And it’s suitably brutal as a result — maybe one of the most harrowing meditations on war this side of The Hurt Locker.
Prepping for the film was similarly “brutal” for Gandolfini. He had just one week of off time between Born Again and Warfare, which meant he had to get into “functional shape” while filming the former.
“My trainer destroyed me,” the actor insists. “Every morning I would run 5 miles with this weighted thing and I would then go to Daredevil.” After wrapping on Born Again, he immediately dove into Navy SEAL bootcamp with his castmates, a veritable who’s who of young actors that included Will Poulter, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, and Joseph Quinn. It was “brutal, but beneficial”: the limited time between shoots kept any anxiety from getting to Gandolfini completely.
“Thank God for bootcamp, because that was where I got to really do the majority of my prep,” he adds. He watched countless documentaries, spoke to the SEAL he plays in the film, and got a crash course in tactical strategy. Ultimately, though, the “camaraderie” that manifested with his co-stars helped inform his performance the most.
There’s a clear sense of brotherhood between the actors, one especially evident as they begin promoting the film. Gandolfini even bonded with Joseph Quinn and Will Poulter about joining the MCU. After Marvel’s ballsy casting announcement for Avengers: Doomsday, Gandolfini is quietly manifesting a crossover of some kind — if not with Quinn’s Johnny Storm, then with another fan favorite.
“Can we get Spider-Man meeting me on the Staten Island Ferry or something?” he half-jokes.
Gandolfini has already manifested his biggest role to date — anything’s possible.
