D'Onofrio is the Kingpin of 'Daredevil'

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Come April, Netflix is introducing a big, bad bald dude that even House of Cards' Frank Underwood wouldn't want to mess with.

Vincent D'Onofrio stars as Wilson Fisk, a New York-born gangster whose methods of cleaning up his city differ greatly from the blind title vigilante of Marvel's Daredevil, in a 13-episode season due April 10.

This Fisk isn't quite the Kingpin of crime from Marvel Comics lore, in looks or demeanor. Yet executive producer Steven DeKnight says Daredevil is as much an origin story of a complex antagonist as it is a portrait of do-gooder lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and his masked secret identity.

The underworld won't even speak Fisk's name because of the power he holds, though at first glance he comes off as insecure, especially when he meets the comely art dealer Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer).

But when folks cross or disrespect him, the results often are very bloody.

"I just brought in this kind of character who in one sentence could easily go from being a child to a monster, depending on where his emotions take him," says D'Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

The late Michael Clarke Duncan played the Kingpin in the 2003 Ben Affleck Daredevil movie, and for his own take on Fisk, D'Onofrio studied the comic books to nail the "whole feeling and mood" of the supervillain.

DeKnight knew he couldn't be as super-sized as the comics' Fisk, a 6-foot-7, 450-pound dude who resembles a sumo wrestler in a fashionable suit.

The actor shaved his head and added about 30 pounds to his 250-pound, 6-foot-3 frame.

"I wanted him to have an appearance of being super-powerful so that when he throws a punch, it's a major punch," D'Onofrio says. "There's a lot of weight behind it."

A fan of D'Onofrio's since 1987's Full Metal Jacket, DeKnight also wanted the actor to look outside the comics for character nuance. In the aftermath of one violent scene in which Fisk gets "pretty rough" with another guy, D'Onofrio says, he sees his reflection as being paler than he actually is — a subtle nod to something the actor discovered about serial killers when doing research for a past role.

"He had a passion and an understanding of what we were trying to do, of making it a very grounded, gritty, realistic show," DeKnight says.

"Here is an actor who's really thinking about it on not only a character depth but a visual depth that I really loved."