Oscar Isaac, who played cool New Republic pilot, Poe, in a galaxy far, far away, and Duke Leto Atreides in Dune steps into Marvel Universe with the mini-series, Moon Knight. Isaac plays a meek gift shop employee, Steven Grant, who is troubled by strange visions involving another life as a globe-trotting mercenary, Marc Spector. There is also a vengeful Egyptian moon god, Khonshu, and a detective called Knight.
Grant suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID). “It seemed like an opportunity to focus on the internal struggle of this character,” says Isaac in a virtual media interaction. The actor says the series allowed them to use Egyptian iconography and the superhero genre to talk about the struggle.
In the skin
Moon Knight showed the way to create an indelible, unusual character, says Isaac. “The story is so point of view. You are in the skin of this guy seeing things happen. You are experiencing it just as he is experiencing it. There is something terrifying about that.”
Marvel has done such an amazing job at combining action and comedy, says Isaac. “With Steven, there was a chance to do a different type of comedy. Marc is a counterpoint to Steven, he is in some ways leaning into a bit of the stereotype of the tortured, dark vigilante guy, but what makes him so special is that he has this little Englishman living inside of him.”
Brothers in arms
Isaac says he roped in his brother, Michael Hernandez, as his acting double to help him with scenes where the different personalities are talking to each other. “He would play either Steven or Marc,” Isaac said. “It was helpful to have someone who is not only a great actor but also shares my DNA to play off of. What I did not anticipate was how technically demanding it was going to be to show up and decide which character I was going to play first. And then try to block that out, give my brother notes, do the scene, and then switch characters.”
The decision to set the action in London, according to Isaac was to change things up. “We have too many characters in New York. Let us make him an expat in London. What if we make him English? What would Peter Sellers do if he was approached with a Marvel project?” That led Isaac to British actor Karl Pilkington in the comedy An Idiot Abroad. “Not so much for the accent as much as his sense of humour where you cannot tell if he knows he is being funny. This guy is not just about accent, but also about his timidity and wanting to connect with people but not quite knowing how.”
Interesting riddle
Ethan Hawke plays the antagonist, Arthur Harrow. “The history of movies is paved with storytellers using mental illness as a building block for the villain,” Hawke comments. “There are countless stories of mentally ill villains, and here we have a mentally ill hero. We have inverted the whole process. I had to find a sane malevolent force. That was an interesting riddle for me.”
Director and one of the executive producers, Mohamed Diab, embraced the protagonist’s mental illness as a way to create an unreliable narrator, Hawke says. “Once you have broken the prism of reality, everything the audience sees is from a skewed point of view. That is interesting for the villain because am I even being seen as I am?”
Green screen and beyond
Shooting on location in Hungary and Jordan was memorable for the cast and crew. Getting to be on the deserts in Jordan, on the location where they shot Lawrence of Arabia was remarkable, says Hawke. “One of the things that surprised me about the Marvel Universe is that it is fun acting in front of a lot of green screens. I come from theatre training and I enjoyed pretending something was there. However, when you are really in the desert, it is so beautiful and I felt some kind of connection to the cinema history of the desert.”
Hawke is all praise for Diab, who he describes as an education. “The way Mohamed thinks, talks, and edits is wonderful. His brain works musically in a different rhythm from the one I have grown up in.” Diab approached scenes with a unique point of view, says Hawke. “It was more valuable to us as performers than something we learn in a textbook. I knew that it was incredibly important for him to not just respect and honour Egyptian mythology but also to revere it and be playful.”
Having fun
Addressing the fear of control and curbing of creativity in big-budget projects, Hawke says it was the opposite atmosphere on Moon Knight. “Grant (Curtis, Executive Producer) and Marvel have translated success into confidence. ‘Yes, we are going to cook in your kitchen, but if we stay in the kitchen, we can do what we want.’ There was a lot of playfulness, willingness to fail, and have bad ideas. You cannot find a great idea if you do not have some dumb ones.”
Isaac, Hawke says, had a huge passion to contribute. “When an actor has a strong hit on a character, when they have something they want to contribute and you follow it, good things happen.”
Rehearsals were an integral part of Moon Knight, according to both Isaac and Hawke. “On the weekend while we were shooting, we would all sit around the table and have a Sunday brunch and talk about the episode,” Isaac said.
“It brought our collective imagination into one thing,” Hawke says. “That made it easier as we were part of the same team, the imaginative force behind it was the same.”
Moon Knight streams on Disney+ Hotstar from March 30, 2022
Published - March 24, 2022 02:19 pm IST