This article contains spoilers for Moon Knight episode two
Moon Knight has been an ambitious reimagining of the MCU formula, but if you’re looking for a way to explain why this show works despite taking a huge step away from that tried approach, then you needn’t look any further than Oscar Isaac’s exemplary performance as Steven Grant or his alter ego, Marc Spector.
Tackling all these different personas in the context of one narrative must have been an exhausting process for Isaac, but not only has the Dune star championed through the grind, but also done something with the role that director and producer Mohamed Diab wouldn’t call anything short of “magical.” As he recently explained it in an interview with Marvel:
“At the beginning, it wasn’t clear to us who Marc is and who Steven is. Oscar at the beginning wanted only to [embody] Steven a day and Marc a day, never on the same day,” Diab said. “After a while, there were a couple of scenes where he was talking in the mirror, and I told him, ‘Why don’t you try [both characters]?’ I kept pushing him and giving him encouragement. All of a sudden, he did this magical thing.”
Further elaborating on that “magical” thing Isaac did, Diab explains that the way the actor alternates between these personas makes him a “genius.”
“When the camera is just panning all of a sudden, he’s someone else. Once he’s Marc, you see him getting taller. When he’s Steven, he’s so approachable. Oscar actually wanted to go back and do [some scenes] again, the shots that he did on different days. He actually wanted to do it in the same take because he became [both characters.] In all of the times that came afterward, that’s how we did it. In those seconds, he’s someone else. It’s inhabiting a different character and being someone else, taking on a different demeanor and a different accent. It’s not easy, but he did it. He’s a genius.”
Moon Knight spoilers follow below the break
During today’s second episode, the Disney Plus series finally unveiled the superhero alter ego for Steven, which is the infamous Mr. Knight from the comics. As challenging as it might seem, Isaac will essentially be portraying four different personas in every Moon Knight episode from here on out, and we can’t wait to see how that actually plays into the show’s narrative as a whole.