Action Director Philip J. Silvera On His ‘Bite The Curb’ Moment In ‘Daredevil: Born Again’

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 24: Philip J Silvera attends the Daredevil: Born Again red-carpet launch event at The Hudson Theater on February 24, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Disney)

Getty Images for Disney

Daredevil: Born Again action director, second-unit director, and stunt coordinator Philip J. Silvera likes to reference an infamous scene from the 1998 crime drama American History X when putting together a fight-and-stunt segment. He doesn’t show anything visceral, but uses the idea behind it to gauge how much impact and feeling he can get from the audience.

“I use the American History X as a philosophy,” Silvera says from his trailer during a break filming Season 3 of the Disney+ series. “That’s my baseline – what is the ‘bite the curb’ moment? You don’t see it, but it’s how the audience feels in a certain way who’ve seen the film. What is the ‘bite the curb’ moment in a sense that grabs the audience and makes them feel connected to the sequence?”

For Daredevil: Born Again season 2, which came out this past March with positive reviews, the Emmy-nominated action director says there were too many for him. Sure, there were a lot of violent scenes, but his “bite the curb” moment was the emotional impact between Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) after the loss of his wife, Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer).

“It was a more emotional scene between Daredevil and Kingpin, where we wanted to make Kingpin go into such a blind rage that he loses [a part of] Vanessa by throwing Daredevil into the painting [that Fisk purchased when he met Vanessa] and destroying something again that he loves with his own blind rage. Well, hold on, let’s not haphazardly have it just destroyed – it’s out of rage. If you look at the sequence leading up to it, you might even see a certain point of view that he lost Vanessa because of himself. So he just did it again in that moment. I think that was probably the moment that was it for me.”

Below, Silvera breaks down the Season 2 filming of the Marvel series, the emotional layers of a fight scene, and what to expect in the next season.

Laura Sirikul: I feel like there’s always pressure to one-up a fight scene with each season. Do you ever feel that pressure while planning for the next season?

Philip J. Silvera: No. I’ll say it for these reasons. My philosophy, from my work as a fight and stunt coordinator to later as a second-unit director and action director, has always been very simple: tell the characters’ story in this moment. That is my baseline philosophy when designing a sequence and collaborating with the showrunners and Marvel producers. Then, as with any project, I discuss with my team how we would design the sequence. It always comes down to this, and this is my baseline for any job – whether from Daredevil to Deadpool to Terminator to Halo Season 2 – what is the story of the characters? What is the truth about who they are? What’s a set of rules that we have to stick to? Then we know how to break them. It always comes from a character’s emotions and location, and then from creating a camera language that uniquely fits those elements for these emotional action sequences.

Sirikul: Each season is so different for Matt Murdock/Daredevil. He lost Foggy last season, and now he is working with the guy who killed him. You also worked on the original Netflix series, and everything Matt went through then. How do you adjust a character’s fighting style to their emotional state?

Silvera: With Born Again Season 1, I came back in with the creative overhaul. I did Episode 1 with [directors] Aaron [Moorehead] and Justin [Benson], who directed that block, and then I actually directed a couple of small sequences with them. I did a small sequence in the middle that I got to action direct – the intercut moment between Muse (Hunter Doohan) and Kingpin. Then again, working with Aaron and Justin, [I was] the second-unit director and action-directed the apartment fight and the warehouse fight with the Punisher (Jon Bernthal). That being said, those sequences were led back into the world, creating that consistent tone that played into Season two, where we had a storyline that was an adjusted version of what was initially done before the creative overhaul. The answer I’m getting is that it starts with a story as an overarching base: once we know where the characters want to go and where we last saw them, we know where to take them. Then we design and outline our action and arc through the characters. In Season 1, he stops being Daredevil, and he’s mostly Matt Murdock. In Season 2, he’s mostly Daredevil, and really stops being Matt Murdock. So the juxtaposition in how he interacted with everyone was more from the Daredevil perspective, that he wants to take Fisk down, but he has more rage. He’s taking it personally and no longer holds to Matt Murdock’s ethics as much because he’s lost things since Fisk took over. There are moments we like to revisit from the Netflix series. We were dealing with the anti-vigilanty task force. We want to set them up to handle Daredevil a bit, but then in Episode 2, he meets a pair who can get a hit on him, and the devil comes out a little more. It’s a throwback to the Netflix series Daredevil Season 2, where [Daredevil has a gun taped to his hand by the Punisher] and he taunts the [biker gang], and the gun is empty. Punisher is messing with him, and the gun goes off. In dealing with Bullseye [this season], there are many things that are great about this. The beauty of working on the show is that there is a longstanding history of character beats and moments we could draw on throughout its history. This person killed Foggy. This person set him up and was manipulated in many ways. There’s this really big story that we lean into, coming from Season 1. There are so many conversations that go on with how we want to deal with the action, whereas the loss of emotion and how much he becomes Daredevil, and how much of Matt Murdock is he holding onto now?

Sirikul: Which is more fun to play with: Matt Murdock or Daredevil?

Silvera: I love when he cuts loose because, at some point, he’s always going to want to reel it back in. But when he cuts loose, and the term we use is ‘Let the devil out,’ there’s a beautiful moment in it. I’ll go back to Season 1 for a second, where he just returns to being the Daredevil again. Muse is hitting him so much. I love the collaboration with Charlie [Cox], he says, “I want to get hit so much that I feel the rage building up inside of me.” So, if you notice, he takes a bunch of these different views, and we could feel his rage just building, which is a beautiful juxtaposition to Kingpin’s rage in the man who was literally sleeping with his wife. But again, anytime we could let the devil out for Charlie or Vincent’s character, we go to a whole other level with these action sequences.

Sirikul: What would you say was the most difficult scene to coordinate? Was there ever a point where you’re like – ‘Oh, that is too much violence?’

Silvera: I never feel that for this particular world that it’s too much violence. One thing I always think about for the characters and the world is how to tell their story. Since we are doing a feature film on a TV timeframe, it has to come from an emotional place – the design of a certain sequence where we got to let them both out in Episode 6, with Kingpin and Daredevil meeting again in this big way. That was a lot of emotional design to set it up. We give both Charlie and Vincent the beats to let the emotion rain through in the action sequence, which is always paramount to Daredevil. That was, emotionally, the toughest sequence to stage with my team, as far as timing goes.

As for violence, in Episode 8, the intercutting hallway pieces where we go very violent – we actually pulled back on some. It was the first time the world saw Kingpin stuck in a room [with civilians]. It was a moment we wanted to set the tone for everyone to create the horror-movie [feel]. One [protestor] is standing there at the front, and Kingpin just grabs and hits him. But Vincent wanted to try something, and he went “Boo.” It was just enough to make everyone pause – and then it was the punch that sent that man flying and killed him. It was then you knew, “Oh my god, this is not what I thought this was. We were here to protest someone we obviously didn’t care for, but now we’re here, stuck in here in the Lion’s Den with a man that can easily kill us.” They all know he’s dangerous. No one has actually seen him physically do anything outside the charity boxing ring. We’ve heard he’s part of the criminal underworld, but no one knows how violent and scary he is. It’s almost like you’re trapped in there with the Rogue One’s Darth Vader scene. You had an audience that was in a horror movie with him – breaking backs. There was a version where he’s snapping arms and even stomping on a face. Some beats did not make the final cut, but again, it leaned into how Kingpin can end others. On the opposite side, we have Jessica Jones, who returns to his world and is a very strong character, and Daredevil in the hallway with the new White Tiger. So setting those two pieces up in a very short time frame [was difficult]. I directed each of those in one night, so it’s doing feature-film action on a TV timeframe, which has always been the biggest challenge in this world.

Sirikul: You’ve worked with the VFX team for many years now. There are many scenes with Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). How difficult is it to incorporate weapons that eventually require added VFX, but still keep the brutality and emotions from the scene?

Silvera: There’s a process I’ve used for years. So the reason why we’re able to do these feature film sequences on a TV timeframe is when we go into prepping the sequence, I shoot, direct, and edit what we call the “Stunt Viz,” which, after multiple conversations of camera language and how we want to shoot it, I will shoot the scene as we would on the day with my cinema cameras. I use RED EPIC cameras and V-Raptors a lot to recreate cinema-looking shots, then I create very specific shots that create a camera language for Bullseye based on things we’ve seen in the past. We want to get involved. [Executive producer] Sana [Amanat] really wanted to do a take that they did in Season 3 of the Netflix era, when Bullseye was introduced. They leaned into a very sharp camera language. Now we have Wilson, whom I love, and the character is sadistically charming, so we wanted to take that a little further. I started adding these very quick, Dutch-angle, sharp movements so you often feel the implication of what he’s shooting, but it’s still very precise. Because I shoot, edit, and do these sequences, I have a VFX team from Sandbox Action Design that I’ve worked with for years, who lay out all the temp VFX that goes to our VFX team here for post-work and editing. We have Freddy [Alhabib] and Gong Myung Lee, our VFX supervisors, who see this, and it’s very clear on how they budget the sequence because we’ve had the conversations. I’ve put in the temp VFX elements to get a very clear story of how we’re doing everything on the day. One of my favorite sequences to do was the Bullseye versus Fake Bullseye in Episode 8. We got to create a unique camera language with my DP. We’ve seen him bank everything in multiple directions, and in this one, we had him curve the blades, so we would track the blades in a very rounded way, and it would take out the fake Bullseye in his very Bullseye style – taking out the hand, the gun, and almost chopping off a finger. He’s got so many unique ways, and this way of throwing is never just a clear line, but he’s so accurate that we wanted to create a unique language for him in that moment.

Sirikul: You’re best known for the One-Take fight scenes in the franchise. For this season, it was with the cages scene. How do you decide which scene you will tackle for this kind of shot?

Silvera: This is a funny story. We had already designed the sequence. [Head of Marvel Streaming] Brad Winderbaum, [Co-Showrunner] Dario [Scardapane], and Sana loved the sequence so much, and the idea of seeing these two characters who are opposite of each other together. They’re like, ‘Phil, let’s turn this sequence into a one-take.’ I’m like, okay. I also worked on Halo Season 2 as the action director, and we did a lot of unique wonders on the show. It was great because we were now taking a sequence we had already pre-designed and turned it into a one-take with a very unique camera language and story. In the past, Daredevil has always fought through fatigue and overcome something. There are classic elements in Daredevil from Seasons 1 and 2, like the staircase scene, and the beautiful one my colleagues Gary Stearns and Don Lee did for Season 3. This particular one was a different story for Matt Murdock, so we’re bringing the Swordsman/Jacques “Jack” Duquesne (Tony Dalton) into the street-level world, so that’s always very different. In this particular story, Matt Murdock is not coming in from fatigue. He’s coming in from a place of having a choice where he could finally get Kingpin out of office or save these people. There’s an angry drive to him that is very different. He’s not hurt. He’s there to do business and to get these people out. Swordsman is taking the role of the fatigued person in this sequence. I love Tony Dalton and the way he gives these perfect little flares that stay true to him, but also gives him Daredevil’s baton, so it’s not so on the nose with the sword. We got to play with weapons, where we let him fight sword-style. But he’s always been captured down and dirty for weeks, so there’s a moment of fatigue in the middle of the sequence where it would normally be Daredevil who is tired. It was this nice juxtaposition in design: Daredevil has always been that type of character, but now it’s the Swordsman.

The camera design in this particular sequence was that each shot was its own mini-movie. We have this very specific, because it’s a “Stitch Oner,” a very specific in-and-out. Now, the piece that happened in the middle of each shot, something organic usually happens as a main story point of going to hit this guy, then have a moment of breath, then we have to take it to this moment. The beautiful thing, even though it’s stitched, there’s still such organize moments that happen in each period, because that one shot took place over two and a half days, and three locations – one to get them into the room, a location for the hallway that then created this dolly-zoom to bring in-and-out, and a transition to another set piece where we stage the big fight itself, so we know the ins-and-outs. After I’ve designed the sequence with my team, and know each shot. This is the beauty part – to get something so organic that it always stays one. As long as the stitches work, sometimes we have to go again to make the stitches work, but then you get a very unique, different performance, and it’s not always 100% the same, which is great, because that’s what keeps the nature of the wonders. It’s just the organic messiness of each piece, as long as we can blend the shots as they go. It’s a very specific shot. Everyone gets a tape mark on where they’re at. I operate part of the sequence, and then one of my camera operators, Blake [Lyons], who is amazing, operates the rest. Now, we get a tape mark; no one can move – we watch the playback and look at it, and we get the next piece. We know the camera language overlaps and block that to the next piece. Now we have a start mark, and we keep coming back to it until we have the piece we want. We have such a great collaborative team on the show for VFX, special effects, wardrobe, set design, our producers, writers, and showrunner. It’s such a massive collaborative piece that requires all hands on deck. It’s amazing to be part of it.

Sirikul: Because Marvel has a large number of characters to play with, each character has special skills and fighting methods they can use. Is there a character that you’d love to play with and coordinate for the next season or future stories?

Silvera: I think [all the characters] are all a flip side of Matt Murdock. Just to say this really quickly. Bullseye and Daredevil have the same skill set, right? But Bullseye has no moral code, so he’s not afraid to kill. Daredevil isn’t afraid to maim people. Kingpin and Daredevil both love New York from a very emotional place, but one will kill and the other will not. Even with Frank Castle and Matt Murdock interacting on the flip sides of the same coin, I love that. So, in saying which character would I love to see in this world…? Again, I never got a chance to work with The Defenders, and there are certain characters from that world I would love to see interact on this level – and I’ll leave it there, and hopefully you know those things get to happen in the new seasons.

Sirikul: What can you tell me about Season 3? What elements do you want to incorporate that you didn’t get to before?

Silvera: I’ll say this, because there’s no spoiler. Luke Cage came back at the end of Season 2. There was a [leaked] set photo, I think [Mike Colter] and I on set when I was directing him. That being said, one of the things I’m a fan of is leaning into who the characters are and actually getting to see a bit more on the street-level world of Daredevil. I’m very excited about how Dario, Sana, Brad, and the rest of the Marvel team are seeing the evolution of these characters in this world. One more – because I got to, I love Team Red in the comic books. I got to be part of Deadpool, the first iteration with Tim Miller. I would love to see Daredevil and Deadpool together at some point because Team Red in the comics, with Spider-Man, is my favorite.

Sirikul: I saw you’re signed onto work on the film, Anonymous Jane. What can you tell me about your next project? How different is it to choreograph scenes with a woman who is a spy versus masked superheroes?

Silvera: I think that the big thing is finding the vulnerability of these characters. Anonymous Jane comes from this very big espionage world, and she’s not impervious and may not have Daredevil’s skill set, but she’s still very good. That being said, there’s a dark humor in how she deals with the pain. I think that when we set up scenarios and design a sequence around a character’s pain, it is about the current moment and understanding the world they are trained and skilled in. There’s humor, but the humor is a mask to what they’re really going through, and leaning into that vision and how [director] Alice [Waddington] had approached the union for this particular project. Those are the things I find interesting. Yes, there are comedy elements. There are badass elements, but it’s more about the character’s struggle and overcoming them, without the comedy losing weight or the humor losing its consequences. There’s always a consequence, and if we could make sure that the nonverbal dialogue of the movement and the character gives consequence to the words, then you have something unique every time. The character is written so uniquely that I’m excited to see how we can bring it to life and evolve it from the comic book/graphic novel to the camera. There’s something beautiful about the character.

The article has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 is available on Disney+.