Jon Bernthal may be a fan favorite for comic book properties like The Walking Dead and The Punisher, but his fans never really expected him to experiment with the fantasy genre.
Bernthal has admitted that he doesn’t know much about roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, but in a recent episode of his podcast, his Daredevil co-star puts him in an impromptu session that introduces him to the game in the simplest way possible.
Watch Deborah Ann Woll teach Jon Bernthal How to Play Dungeons & Dragons
During an interview with Bernthal for the Real Ones podcast, Deborah Ann Woll discusses her experience as a seasoned dungeon master and explains the basics of the game to Bernthal.
What caught the attention of many fans, though, was how Woll effortlessly put together a mini-session for Bernthal and let him play D&D on the spot with no preparation whatsoever. She simply set the narrative and let Bernthal play immediately. Check this out:
Though more elaborate Dungeons & Dragons campaigns feature things like miniatures and character sheets, Woll essentially just gave Bernthal the straight-up gameplay loop of her setting the scene and asking Bernthal what to do. She also gives him an idea of mechanics like perception and history, without bogging him down with a lot of details.
“The Goal is To Tell a Great Story”
Despite being an actress, Woll explains that she also gets paid to create D&D campaigns for other people, and that it’s become a side hustle for her. When asked by Bernthal if the goal of the game was to win, Woll replied, “No, the goal is to tell a great story.”
Woll also explains how the game had ‘saved’ her from recent setbacks like the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strikes. She also gushes about the creative nature of the game and how it encourages people to go back to a place where they can be imaginative. She continues:
“It’s the greatest game ever created. It’s just collaborative storytelling. You just sit at the table, it’s as close you can get to when you were seven on the playard just, like, making up games and stories, and I love it, and I will do it until I die.”
Returning to Daredevil
For now, Page and Bernthal are expected to come back for Daredevil: Born Again. They weren’t initially announced to return, but after the series underwent a major overhaul, characters like Karen Page and Foggy Nelson were said to be brought back to be regulars for the series.
Though the Netflix series does get a lot of praise, Daredevil still had its major hiccups like the dragging plot that would try to fill in a certain amount of episodes and the clashing of elements like crime bosses and ninjas. It’s expected that Born Again would keep a lot of elements of the series that worked, but would be dropping some of the more questionable parts of the original show.
Until Marvel gives fans an official look, all they can really do is speculate. Daredevil: Born Again is expected to release sometime around March 2025 on Disney+.