Wilson Bethel's Best Job Yet

Wilson Bethel stopped by to talk about Daredevil: Born Again, and the conversation ran everywhere. He plays Bullseye in the Disney+ series, Season 2 airs Tuesdays, and he is nearing 20 years in the business. He said it is the best job he has ever had. Not a common thing to hear from an actor who has been around.

Marvel has been a good boss. The cast is ego-free. Vincent D'Onofrio is formidable, but off-camera a fountain of advice and care. Charlie Cox, who plays Daredevil, is the same way. Bethel talked about showing up in spandex to live out a 10-year-old fantasy, killing insane numbers of people on screen, and how little ego there is on set.

Rich recalled his own interview with D'Onofrio, where he pushed a follow-up question about acting process after D'Onofrio offered Full Metal Jacket stories about Kubrick. D'Onofrio shut him down on the spot. Rich still wishes he had let the man talk.

The conversation detoured into Ben Franklin. Bethel played Franklin in his sixth-grade production of 1776 and went full bald cap. His mother was an avid yard sailor in New Hampshire. One Sunday she found an actual wheelchair from 1777, wicker back, museum quality, and offered to buy it for the play if Bethel agreed to three years of yard work. He took the deal. He performed the show in a 200-year-old collectible wheelchair that every kid in school knew was older than the country.

Rich, whose brother also played Franklin, pulled out a feather pen at the end of the segment as a gift. 1776 is a recurring reference in the Rich household.

Then tennis. Bethel plays twice a week at a high level. His all-time favorite is Nadal. His current favorite is Alcaraz. Rich walked him through a theory, which became a Mardy Fish-endorsed plan, for how Rich could steal one point off Carlos Alcaraz. Serve as he crowds the net. Hit him with it. Bethel called it genius. He also offered a real tennis principle, that an infinitely inferior player can crack the mind of a great one through sheer weirdness, and once a tennis player loses confidence the match is over.

Bethel closed with Imperfect Women on Apple TV, opposite Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss, and Kate Mara. And a firm plan to set his pantyhose on fire the moment they called cut.