Ever since Jon Bernthal brought his tragic and unbelievably brutal version of Frank Castle to Daredevil Season 2, fans have been clamoring to see the man star in his own Marvel series for Netflix. Well, we're getting closer than ever to having The Punisher assault our hot little eyeballs on the small screen, and now word has come down that another familiar face has joined the cast. Actress Shohreh Aghdashloo has signed on for a recurring role in the freshman season of the series.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Shohreh Aghdashloo will be playing the mother of tough Homeland Security agent Dinah Madani, Farah. Aghdashloo's character is Iranian (like the actress herself) but has spent most of her life in the United States and has built a profitable psychiatry practice. Seeing as how the show's official literature on Dinah states that she will be "vexed by The Punisher," it sounds likely that she will be turning to her mother to try to understand why Castle as Punisher does what he does, not to mention how Dinah can find and stop him. Dinah is a character who does not appear in the comics, so her mother is similarly designed just for The Punisher on Netflix.
Shohreh Aghdashloo has had a long and storied career in film and television dating back to the 1970s in her native Iran. She headed for the States in the late '80s and began slowly making a name for herself here. She made appearances on shows like Matlock and Martin in the '90s, but really came to the public's wider attention with her supporting role as Ben Kingsley's wife in the 2003 drama House of Sand and Fog, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. From there she has been able to work steadily, with noted turns on TV and in movies such as 24, ER, Will & Grace, X-Men: The Last Stand, Grey's Anatomy, House of Saddam (for which she won an Emmy for Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie in 2009), House, NCIS and Grimm. Most recently she's lent her talents to Star Trek Beyond and has had a starring role on the Syfy series The Expanse since 2015.
Since neither Dinah nor her mother Farah are a part of the Marvel comics canon, we don't know right now if either character will be sympathetic to The Punisher's work and eventually come to side with him in his single-minded mission to rid New York of dangerous criminals by any means possible. However Shohreh Aghdashloo's Farah feels about The Punisher, we can bet that her recurring role will certainly add a lot to the series.
The Punisher doesn't have an official release date yet, but Netflix has finally revealed that it will, indeed, air sometime this year. Until then, be sure to check out what we know about the new show, and be sure to bookmark our summer premiere guide, Netflix premiere guide and fall TV premiere guides to see what you can watch in the coming months.
