Deborah Ann Woll is best known for having starred in two TV series so far: True Blood and Daredevil. Regarding the latter, the actress reprised the beloved character Karen Page also in Daredevil: Rebirth, released on Disney+ with a narrative arc that will, unfortunately, end with the third season, announced as the last. In the meantime, the actress has spoken about how she found a way to modify one of the darkest stories tied to her character.
Daredevil, Deborah Ann Woll reveals a backstory about Karen that she fought for and that was heard
Deborah Ann Woll has been one of the leading faces of Daredevil, accompanying the first three seasons and then returning to the role in Daredevil: Rebirth (though she was not very visible during the first season on Disney+). Being very close to Matt Murdock and having learned of his double identity as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, Karen had to learn to watch her back, enduring a lot over the years. She was a target of Bullseye, faced murder charges, and witnessed the death of her best friend Foggy Nelson. She also nearly ended up in prison, something that would have happened if it hadn’t been for Matt Murdock.
In an interview with Collider, Deborah Ann Woll spoke about how delving into Karen’s past represented one of the first times in her career she could contribute creatively to shaping her character. “Usually, I don’t try to change something unless I know it will be a truly exciting addition. I don’t just do things haphazardly… I do a lot of research before proposing anything. Because sometimes the things that seem the most difficult, if you manage to make them work, are actually very interesting.”
Regarding Daredevil, the actress was very satisfied with the work done in the third season with the Karen episode, which deepened her family history: “In Daredevil, Karen Page has a dark and deep past, which we constantly allude to in the first two seasons. We had three showrunners across all three seasons, and each had a different idea of what her past was. So every time I met the showrunner, I asked him: ‘What is your take on her story?’ Of course, I had mine. Finally, in the third season, Erik Oleson decided to dedicate an episode to her, and I will be forever grateful to him, because in the middle of his superhero series he took the whole crew out of town and we shot a small family drama. And I can’t believe he had enough respect for me and my character to devote that much time to it. I’m truly moved and I’ll be forever grateful to him,” she recalled.
To the actress’s eyes, that flashback was meant to emphasize Karen’s sense of guilt, who lost her brother in a fatal car accident that she caused. Initially, however, the showrunner had a different idea, but he changed perspective following her directives: “But in all of this, since we had talked at length about what this story was and why she had been haunted for so long – and in the first draft they wrote and presented to me… because it concerns the death of her brother, spoiler, and it’s her fault; she feels it’s her fault – in that version there was the boyfriend chasing us in the car, and it was he who caused the accident. And I told him: ‘I think there’s too much room for her to say it wasn’t her fault if that’s the case.’ He answered: ‘Okay if he doesn’t chase her and I make the car crash because I’m drunk, wired and angry? In this way there’s no one else to blame.’ The upshot: ‘Can we really make it devastating?’ Because initially I had told them: ‘I don’t want the terrible secret to be that I killed a guy to save a school bus full of children, right?’ Something like that simply doesn’t have a real impact, and it happens far too often on TV. I wanted it to be something she could never forgive herself for. And he did it, which was fantastic. He agreed, and that’s what we shot.”
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