Shooting for the moon: How Oscar Isaac brought Marvel's mysterious Moon Knight to life
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Oscar Isaac wasn't sure he wanted to join the Marvel universe. The 43-year-old actor has built his career on both oddball genre projects (Annihilation, Inside Llewyn Davis) and high-profile blockbusters (Star Wars, Dune), amassing one of Hollywood's best and most eclectic resumes. He's no stranger to comic book movies, either: He lent his voice to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and he'll have an even bigger role in the upcoming sequel. (He also played the growling villain in 2016's ill-received X-Men: Apocalypse… but the less said about that one the better.)
So when Isaac first met with Marvel Studios about potentially headlining his own Disney+ show, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to throw himself into something as big — or frankly, as strange — as Moon Knight, a trippy, six-episode series about a mentally ill vigilante with an otherworldly connection to an Egyptian moon god.
"I had reservations and hesitations about going into this world because I didn't know what to expect," Isaac tells EW. "It wasn't a character I was familiar with. There's a lot of superhero content out there, so I wasn't sure if we needed another one — especially one that was about six hours. There was a very small target to hit with this in order for me to feel really amped up about doing it."
Marvel Studios Oscar Isaac in 'Moon Knight'
Fortunately for Isaac, Moon Knight hit that target in two ways. One, he says, was the opportunity to play what might be Marvel's weirdest, most complex lead yet: a troubled hero struggling with dissociative identity disorder, while also being the human avatar for the ancient Egyptian god Khonshu. (Again, we said it was weird.) The second was the full creative freedom that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige offered him if he took the role, encouraging Isaac to craft "something that really meant something to me emotionally as an actor and a storyteller."
The result is the ambitious Moon Knight, a supernatural saga that debuts Wednesday on Disney+. At first glance, the premiere episode feels more like a dreamy character study than a smash-'em-up Avengers tale, introducing Steven Grant (Isaac), a mild-mannered Brit who works in a museum gift shop in London. (Why London? Isaac jokes that Marvel was approaching maximum capacity on stories set in New York City.) Steven's life seems ordinary enough, spending most of his time caring for his goldfish and regularly calling his mom. But before long, the awkward gift shop clerk realizes he's been sharing a body with Marc Spector, an elite American mercenary who long ago agreed to be the avatar for Khonshu.
It was the prospect of unraveling Steven Grant's psyche that most intrigued Isaac, and to prepare, he threw himself into research on dissociative identity disorder, citing Robert Oxman's memoir A Fractured Mind as a particularly helpful resource. It was also Isaac who came to directors Mohamed Diab, Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead chock-full of ideas of how to explore Steven's personality — right down to the particulars of his distinct British accent.
Some of the show's trickiest scenes are those where Isaac is essentially talking to himself, holding entire conversations between Marc and Steven. It was Diab who suggested using reflections to portray those heart-to-hearts — a theme that recurs throughout the series. "That's why I feel like you need to watch this a few times, because you start to see the role that reflections constantly play throughout the entire thing," Isaac teases. "It's just suffused with meaning and symbolism."
Fortunately for Isaac, he also had an unexpected ally on set for those tricky mirrored sequences. When the show's producers decided to hire a stand-in for the scenes where Marc and Steven talk, it was Isaac who suggested the perfect candidate: his brother, Michael Hernandez. "I was like, 'Well, I know someone that's great,'" Isaac says with a laugh. "He's a great actor, and he happens to share my DNA."
That collaborative spirit and familial vibe extended through the rest of the shoot: Early on, Isaac and costar Ethan Hawke (who plays Moon Knight's charming adversary, Arthur Harrow) began a tradition of gathering the actors, directors, and key crew members every Sunday for brunch. Together, they'd run through every sequence they needed to shoot that week, and they'd adjust or rewrite scenes if anyone felt something wasn't working.
The result was an environment that Isaac says felt more like a low-budget indie than a massive superhero story — proving that sometimes, even the loneliest vigilantes can use a little teamwork.
"What I didn't expect was that it was going to be such a collaborative experience," Isaac adds. "Not only for me, but everyone involved. There was so much freedom to fail, to try stuff. You only get a good idea by saying a lot of dumb ideas first, generally. There was a lot of trust in that process. I think that was a big surprise."
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