Daredevil fans have patiently been waiting to see more of Karen Page’s backstory play out on TV. She is the secretary at Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson’s law firm, Nelson and Murdock. It is well known that Karen has a troubled past, but we finally get more out of her in season three’s episode 10.
Karen’s world changes when she crashes her car while she is high, and her little brother, who is sitting beside her in the passenger seat, is killed. As the story unfolds, Deborah Ann Woll, who plays Karen, shares her process of getting into such a complex character and how she wanted her story told. “This was a story about atonement, a story about someone who made a terrible, fatal mistake and had to learn how to accept that and forgive themselves for it,” she says. “Having been through what she has with her family, and being rejected after [the crash], Karen’s assumption is that anyone else who knows me at that level will also reject me. So I have to hide. I can’t fully share myself with anyone in my life, because then there will be no one.”
With her brother gone, her mother’s passing from cancer, and now her father turning his back on her, Karen feels she has nobody left. This leads her to become more reluctant with sharing her feelings. She has a hard time opening up to the ones who try to care for her and grow closer to her.
Woll pushes forward with her character while she deals with anxiety, but Karen may have taught her how to deal with it. “Yeah, I have anxiety, and I think whether I want it to or not, that pops up in my roles,” she says. The admirable thing about Karen is that she keeps pushing through. No matter how scared she is, no matter how much she wants to let that feeling swallow her, she lets that motivate her, and I am inspired by that. I hope not to look at my anxiety, or any person’s anxiety, as a weakness, so much as a motivation to say, ‘I’m really scared, and I don’t know how to handle this situation, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t.’ Which makes you all the more courageous.”
Karen is such a strong symbol of strength in women. Her traits present her to be an unstoppable and strong-willed character. The future will show more of Karen in a different light.