Moon Knight has been on Kevin Feige’s radar for a long time. The character made his first appearance in “Werewolf by Night” in 1975, made his cameos around the Marvel Universe for a couple of years before getting his own outing in 1980.
Set in London, Marvel’s latest series on Disney+ follows Steven Grant (a mild-mannered gift shop employee by day), who turns into a badass international mercenary Marc Spector by night. On top of this, this split personality individual takes orders from an ancient Egyptian god of the moon.
During a recent online press conference, lead actor Oscar Isaac revealed that his brother Michael Hernández came onboard to play his other personality. “The first thing was that we hired my brother, Michael Hernández, to come in and be the other me,” the 43-year-old star said. “It’s the closest thing to me there is on Earth. He came in, and he would play either Steven or Marc. He even did the accent and everything. That was really helpful, to have someone who’s not only a great actor, but who shares my DNA, to play off of.”
Oscar Isaac continued, “Something I didn’t anticipate was how technically demanding that was gonna be, having to show up and decide which character I was gonna play first, and then try to block that out, give my brother notes, do the scene, and then switch characters. One of the fun things about acting, if not the most fun thing, is acting opposite somebody and letting something spontaneous happen that you didn’t expect. There wasn’t really an opportunity to do that and still try to find what makes it feel spontaneous and not all planned out. That was challenging.”
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Of course, it goes without saying that every good superhero show has a good villain. In “Moon Knight”, Ethan Hawke will be making his Marvel debut, playing a cult leader named Arthur Harrow. “The history of movies is paved with storytellers using mental illness as a building block for the villain,” the Oscar-nominated actor said. “There are countless stories of mentally ill villains, but we have a mentally ill hero, and that’s fascinating because we’ve now inverted the whole process. As the antagonist, I can’t be crazy because the hero is crazy, so I have to find a sane lunatic, or a sane malevolent force.”
“That was an interesting riddle for me, to figure out how to be in dynamics with what Oscar was doing. Once you’ve broken the prism of reality, you realise that everything the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view, and that’s really interesting for the villain. That was our riddle. We came up with somebody who was trying to save the world and who, in his mind, is Saint Harrow. He thinks he’s gonna be part of the great solution,” Ethan Hawke added.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays off. In the meantime, get to know more about Moon Knight’s origin story here. “Moon Knight” will premiere on Disney+ this 30th March.
Images courtesy of Disney+.
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