Daredevil’s Cancellation Seems To Have Ended Deborah Ann Woll’s Career
Not only was the cancellation of Daredevil a shock but the after effects for some actors involved, one in particular, have also been quite shocking.
It has been a year and a half since Netflix decided to cancel the very excellent Marvel series Daredevil. The show enjoyed a three-year run and was popular with both critics and fans alike, coming in at a 92% favorable rate on Rotten Tomatoes. The series not only had great storytelling but also wonderful performances by series stars Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk) and Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page).
Not only was the cancellation of Daredevil a shock but the after effects for some actors involved, one in particular, have also been quite shocking. For 35-year-old actress Deborah Ann Woll, the cancellation continues to haunt her because it seems to have ended her career.
Woll has been around acting for some time. She graduated from the BFA program from the USC School of Theatre at the University of Southern California and shortly thereafter began to snag bit parts in high-level TV shows such as ER, My Name Is Earl, and The Mentalist. But it was the HBO series True Blood that moved her into the spotlight. Woll appeared as vampire Jessica Hamby in 71 of the series’ 81 episodes.
During that time, she also appeared as the vampire in the spin-off True Blood: Jessica’s Blog for 38 episodes. With her star on the rise, it wasn’t surprising that Woll got the part in Marvel’s Daredevil. The much bigger surprise is that in the year and a half since Daredevil’s cancellation, Woll has not found any other work.
Deborah opened up about her inability to find work since the cancellation on Joe Q’s Mornin Warm-Up. The Joe Q in question is Marvel’s Creative Director Joe Quesada and Woll was rightfully emotional as she spoke to Joe. “I’m just really wondering whether I’ll get to work again, whether anyone wants to work with me again, and whether I still have it, all of those scary things. And part of my brain goes, ‘No, you’re just being crazy, calm down.’ But the part of me that loves [acting] and the problem with being an artist and an actor, and any of these professions where you put a piece of your soul into your work, is that it becomes a part of your identity.”
Given the excellence of her prior performances, it is hard to imagine Woll not finding an acting job. Her credits include jobs that were supposed to take place after the Daredevil cancellation, but she seemed to indicate that all her credited work came before the cancellation, it was just the release dates that came after.
Deborah Woll did reflect on how not finding work is affecting her personally, as she told Joe, “If I’m not acting, I’m not sure who I am. And since it’s been so long since I’ve really gotten to do it, I’m struggling a little bit with how to maintain my self-worth, my sense of my own value. . . I haven’t had an acting job since, and that’s been really hard for me. So even before COVID kind of flipped the world on its head, I was struggling with this.”
Her emotional confession caught the eyes of a couple of co-workers, D’Onofrio and her Punisher co-star Jon Bernthal. They both spoke up for Woll. D’Onofrio used Twitter for his response…
Seeing D’Onofrio’s tweet, Bernthal responded in kind…
The coronavirus won’t keep Hollywood closed down forever. Let’s hope when the doors open again, they will also open arms wide for the talented Deborah Ann Woll.
