Last Thursday, the American Foundation For The Blind held the 19th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards in New York City. Charlie Cox was honored for his portrayal of blind lawyer Matt Murdoch in Daredevil.
Cox said during his acceptance speech, “I’ve had a great number of emails and letters from people in the blind community experiencing degrees of vision loss. I had one particular stranger in London who was understandably stressed by her decreased vision.”
He explained that the woman was worried about losing her independence.
“Based on the experience that I’ve had on the show and being so amazed by the amount of tools and the support and education … that is not the case.”
For an actor who didn’t even know he was auditioning for a blind character when he started this journey, he’s certainly come a long way.
He also spoke to The Mary Sue after receiving the award, and had a few comments on playing the blind lawyer.
“It’s a very daunting prospect, because you realize how important it is to get that right and to find a consistency and a validity to the performance.”
“I feel very grateful to be here. I’m an actor, and I was lucky enough to get a role and fit in a show that required me to portray a blind man. I’m not sure how much credit I really deserve. Other than just taking it seriously, hopefully as I would do with any job, but as a byproduct of a piece of luck, I get to be affiliated with an amazing organization like AFB. So that’s a wonderful kind of happy accident.”
Daredevil was the first show from Netflix with audio description, and they have made a move to keep creating shows with audio description for people who are visually impaired.
“I think it’s absolutely vital and incredibly important and good for Netflix to pull the trigger so quickly like that. They were really on it. It says a lot about who they are as a company, and I believe now all their shows are going that direction. They’re in the process of making all their shows accessible to people who are visually impaired. It’s brilliant; it’s a great thing.”
And – when asked about Season 2 of Daredevil?
“Yeah, it’s actually quite fun to get that question, because everyone who knows anything about Marvel knows that I can’t answer it.”
“But, I can tell you it’s going to be a Hell of a ride.”
Source: Variety