From Moon Knight’s first trailer, it was clear that Steven Grant’s British nature and vocal quirks are important details about him that will likely help shape how the show deals with the character’s canonical struggles with dissociative identity disorder. What was less clear, however, was how the decision to portray Moon Knight as an Englishman actually came about due to the larger form factor of the current MCU.
Although Marvel comics’ Moon Knight was originally born and raised in Chicago before becoming a costumed superhero, Disney Plus’ upcoming Moon Knight series Oscar Isaac plays a slightly different version of the title character that happens – it seems – to hail from jolly old London. Speaking to Isaac during the recent Moon Knight press party, he told us how bringing his own biological brother into the project helped shape his approach to Steven Grant and Marc Spector, one of Moon Knight’s alternate personalities.
“It was really helpful to have someone who is not only a great actor but also shares my DNA,” Isaac said of his brother, Mike Hernandez. “But something I didn’t anticipate was how technically challenging that was going to be — I had to show up and decide which character I was going to play first, and then try to tune that out, take notes to my brother, and then do the scene , and then switch characters, and then find out.
Moon Knight, Isaac explained, was always going to be set in London, where Marc works as a mild-mannered museum clerk, because Marvel felt “we just have too many characters in New York.” When Isaac first signed on to the project, the studio hadn’t quite settled on the idea that one of Moon Knight’s personalities should be Brit, and there was a chance the hero was simply being portrayed as an American expat who wandered through the city. That all changed, however, when Isaac started seeing his Moon Knight character as an opportunity to show his passion for English comedies like Stath Lets Flats and The Office.
“I thought, ‘There might be an opportunity here to do something,'” Isaac said. “‘What if we make him an Englishman? What if Peter Sellars was approached with a Marvel project? What would he do?'”
Isaac pointed to Karl Pilkington’s appearance in An Idiot Abroad as another reference point for his Moon Knight, less because of his accent and more “for his sense of humor that you don’t tell if he knows he’s funny”. Like its comic book counterpart, Moon Knight’s Marc/Steven is Jewish, and while Isaac didn’t elaborate on how the show will explore that about him, he did stress that London is home to a fairly robust Jewish community in areas like Enfield up north.
“I started listening to accents, which are something like North East London, and then I just settled on that and found this [character]’ said Isaac. “It wasn’t just about his accent, but also his shyness, but also his desire to connect with people but not knowing exactly how.”
Moon Knight is coming to Disney Plus on March 30th.