It’s been just two days since the first episode of Moon Knight dropped, and fans are already praising the performances of Oscar Isaac in the title role … as well as in at least two other roles. Ethan Hawke is gaining accolades for his performance of the sinister Arthur Harrow, but there’s one baddie in the show that the fans just love to hate: Donna.
Donna, played by British actress Lucy Thackeray, is the overbearing and sarcastic supervisor of Moon Knight’s alter ego, the hapless and ineffectual museum gift shop worker, Steven Grant. Donna is every worker’s worst nightmare of a boss, and fans took to social media in droves to join in on the dogpile.
Recently Thackeray sat down with The Direct to discuss Steven and Donna’s backstory and to explain (somewhat) all the venom her character seems to have for Isaac’s bumbling Steven. Thackeray has gushed with praise for Isaac in the days since the first episode aired, and indicated that the two actors collaborated to establish a history for the character beyond what is revealed in front of the camera.
“Steven has clearly worked there a while. I don’t think this is a sort of new relationship because I don’t think Donna would be quite so freely horrible to him if he was new. You know what I mean? It was fun because I didn’t really know—a lot of what came [to be] was me and Oscar [Isaac’s] sort of chemistry as actors.”
– Lucy Thackeray
Thackeray also indicated that Donna feels the way many of us feel do when dealing with an employee who is constantly asleep at the wheel, as Grant comes off. From the fan’s perspective of watching a superhero origin, Donna certainly is unsympathetic. But from the perspective of a boss having to deal with chronic tardiness and inefficiency? Well, as they say, each character has their own version of the story.
“It was just a lot of fun. To play this established relationship of: she’s the boss. I don’t just mean that literally. She is the boss out of these two. She is the master, he is the servant; that sort of dynamic. I assumed he’d worked there for a while. Creepin’ in, he’s always late. He’s useless. He speaks really quietly, which probably winds her up as well. But me and Oscar had real fun with that. And that sort of grew with each sort of day I was there, which was fun.”
– Lucy Thackeray
Whether we’ll see more of Donna throughout the series can only be answered by watching the remaining five episodes. One thing for certain though, if she is in episode two, she’s definitely going to have some strong words with Steven about the state of that restroom.
Moon Knight episode two will begin streaming on Disney Plus on April 6.