Everyone is gushing over the hallway fight scene in Episode 2 of DAREDEVIL. And rightfully so, because it's one long take that is brutal and exhausting, but absolutely thrilling to watch (over and over again).
Obviously, if you haven't seen this episode don't continue reading because actor Charlie Cox discusses it below, via SlashFilm. Or, you can just watch that scene right now by clicking right here and then coming back to read what he says.
Cox on if that scene was cut and edited together to look like it was one long take:
"No, that’s one take."
On spending a full day to shoot that scene:
"It was incredible. It was as a special day as it was to as the scene has turned out. We dedicated our whole day to it. The first half of the day was just the camera movements. And then we got into, it was as you know it’s one take, so we had to get everything right. Each attempt that we had at it. And it’s incredibly tricky because it’s not like a long tracking shot with two people speaking, it’s a long tracking shot with people punching. And if one punch doesn’t land, it no longer works. It ceases to work as a scene. So I think we did it 12 times. I think three of them we made it all the way through to the end. And one of them was the one in the show, which is kind of almost flawless. I mean, it’s very hard to pick holes in that."
On if he did it all by himself or had help from a stuntman:
"I come in and I go in a door, I hide behind the door, Chris Brewster comes out, he does his bit. Then he goes into a room, I come back out, I do a bit and, you know."
Finally, executive producer and showrunner Steven DeKnight spoke about this scene:
"You know, when I first came onto the show, when I took over for Drew Goddard, who had to leave to do the Sinister Six movie, the first two episodes were written. So I got to the end of reading that Episode 2 thing and, you know, it was described as this long, continuous fight in a hallway. And I thought oh that’s great. I don’t know how the hell we’ll ever be able to do it, but that’s great. So the next key was our Stunt Coordinator and we hired Philip Silvera. If you remember the elevator sequence from Winter Soldier, he’s actually one of the guys in that sequence, which I didn’t know until much later. But he had worked with Marvel before. And he gave us a great test reel for the fight in the Episode 1. He put together a little test and he said, that’s exactly it. I had always approached it this way as I wanted this world to be very grounded."
To read more about DAREDEVIL, click here.