The stars of Disney+'s latest release, “Moon Knight,” including Ethan Hawke (Arthur Harrow) and May Calamawy (Layla), join Director Mohamed Diab, co-Directors Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, and Executive Producer Grant Curtis to discuss their new Disney+ series in this interview with CinemaBlend Sr. Content Producer Law Sharma. Tune in to their deep dive into Hawke’s villainous portrayal, the representation of Egyptian characters and themes throughout the series, Oscar Isaac’s breathtaking performance, and more.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 I have to say right off the bat, I want in on the cult.
00:03 Let me join it.
00:04 - You want in?
00:04 All right, you can join my cult.
00:05 We're gonna heal the world, brother.
00:07 - Let's do it.
00:08 Don't mind the shirt, I'm in.
00:09 (dramatic music)
00:12 - It's time.
00:14 - You mentioned in the press conference
00:20 that when you're playing a villain,
00:22 you don't wanna consider yourself a villain.
00:24 Can you explain why that's important
00:26 to playing someone like Harrow?
00:28 - Whenever I see someone mustache twirling
00:31 or monologuing about how they want to destroy the world
00:35 and everything, I just get a little bored
00:37 because I don't believe it,
00:39 that most of the people that inflict damage on others,
00:43 you know, the Stalins and Pol Pots of the universe,
00:46 think they're good people.
00:48 They think the ends justify their means
00:51 because they somehow believe
00:53 like a divine thing is happening with them
00:55 and they're megalomaniacs, you know?
00:58 And so I wanted him to make a lot of sense to himself.
01:01 I think he thinks he's healing the world.
01:03 He has to do some unfortunate things,
01:05 but the world will be grateful.
01:06 - You are Marvel Studios'
01:08 first Middle Eastern character on screen.
01:12 I wonder what was important to you in portraying that
01:15 and what kind of input did you have
01:17 when it came to developing the background
01:19 for this character?
01:20 - We all sat together.
01:22 We spent like six hours on every episode
01:25 and had this kind of rehearsal process
01:28 and everyone was involved.
01:30 And because she's not someone who's been in the comics,
01:33 it took a while.
01:36 It wasn't like, "Oh yeah, this is who she is."
01:38 It took filming her for a couple months to be like,
01:40 "Oh, this is who she is."
01:42 And that came through really the stunts, a lot of it.
01:45 I trained for two months.
01:46 A lot of the physical work brought that out.
01:50 But what I loved was being able to play,
01:53 well, something I love about Arab women,
01:56 women all over, but especially Arab women,
01:58 is they have a very soft strength to them.
02:03 And I wanted to bring that to the screen
02:06 as opposed to being like,
02:06 "She has to look this way, tough,"
02:10 or be really vulnerable.
02:11 It's like, "What if that comes together?"
02:13 So I pulled from women and myself in the Middle East
02:20 as opposed to from the West.
02:22 We always see ourselves portrayed in such an inaccurate way.
02:27 The tropes of seeing us through the Orientalist point of view
02:31 and women are submissive, men are bad,
02:33 or terrorists, or those kinds of things.
02:36 So it was very important for me to show Mai
02:38 as a strong female character.
02:40 All my movies, and the three movies that I directed,
02:44 have very, very strong female characters.
02:46 My mom is strong, my wife is strong, my daughter is strong,
02:49 and this is how they are.
02:52 I wish that if I succeeded,
02:55 this opens door to more people like me,
02:58 or more people around the world
02:59 who actually can, their voices could be heard.
03:04 'Cause we have, each of us,
03:07 if you felt like this show is unique,
03:09 it's because I have a unique point of view,
03:10 because I'm unique and different.
03:12 So I'm sure everyone, through their own life,
03:16 have a different point of view that we need to hear,
03:19 and we need to see,
03:20 and it's probably fresh and different.
03:22 (knocking)
03:24 - It's coming.
03:26 (dramatic music)
03:29 - Well, obviously, as you can imagine,
03:30 we always, from day one,
03:31 wanted to be respectful and reverential.
03:33 And to do so, we brought in consultants,
03:35 especially on the mental health side.
03:37 Because it's a challenge.
03:38 We're obviously dealing with a superhero.
03:40 We're dealing with a fictional representation of this,
03:43 a supernatural-infused representation.
03:46 But we worked with consultants
03:47 to try to get the mental health aspect of it right,
03:50 and always be, as I said, respectful.
03:52 And I think the fans,
03:53 when the final frame is shown
03:56 and the lights come up after the final episode,
03:58 I think they are gonna feel that respect
03:59 with which we worked with the mental illness.
04:03 And then on the Egyptian side,
04:05 part of that job got really, really easy
04:07 when we hired Mohamed Diab.
04:09 And it's one of the reasons
04:10 why we hired the great Mohamed Diab.
04:12 He's not just a storyteller.
04:14 He's an Egyptian storyteller working at the top of his game.
04:17 And everything that he comes to with the narrative,
04:20 he comes through from an organic representation
04:23 of Egypt, of Cairo.
04:25 And that's why that became much easier.
04:26 Because it wasn't like,
04:28 and we had great researchers on this show.
04:30 We had a great production designer,
04:31 Stefania Stella, always making authenticity
04:35 first and foremost.
04:36 But when your director lives there,
04:39 grew up there, lives and breathes it,
04:40 it made that aspect so much easier to represent properly.
04:43 And I think we did so.
04:45 - The guy's a real artist.
04:47 He just is.
04:48 And he's a very, there's love for him
04:52 because he puts a lot of love out into the world.
04:55 He's a great listener and a great thinker.
05:00 And he knew that this was a huge opportunity for him
05:04 to play on a really big canvas
05:07 and to really engage with Hollywood
05:09 in a way that a lot of young filmmakers dream of.
05:13 And that he wanted to do his best.
05:16 And he just put forth tremendous effort
05:19 and put his intelligence and his wife too, Sarah.
05:22 They're very kind, warmhearted people
05:27 who took the opportunity really seriously.
05:29 And that inspires you to go to work
05:33 when you know somebody really cares about what they're doing
05:36 and it really is important to them.
05:37 - A lot of it was we were kind of digging into
05:41 our own experience and our own instincts
05:46 on exactly what's exciting and what's thrilling
05:49 and what's scary and what's personal.
05:51 Really again, what's personal was where we kept on digging.
05:55 And "Mohammed" was exactly the same way
05:57 where there wasn't a whole lot of conversation
06:00 around like make this moment like this movie.
06:02 And the reason is, is "Moon Knight" is a character
06:05 that has no canonic,
06:10 canonic affiliation with the Avengers necessarily.
06:14 He doesn't have to.
06:15 In some ways he's an outcast from the main,
06:20 the biggest characters in Marvel.
06:21 And so we were kind of allowed to do exactly
06:24 whatever we want, but also we needed to do
06:27 something that was very, very left of center.
06:30 And that was really exciting to us when we signed on.
06:33 ♪ Hold the phone ♪
06:36 - Yeah?
06:37 - Oh my God, you're alive.
06:38 What's wrong with you, Mark?
06:41 - Why did you call me Mark?
06:43 - But I do wonder which version of "Moon Knight,"
06:45 whether it's Mark or Steven or Moon Knight himself,
06:49 was the best scene partner for you?
06:51 Which one was the most enjoyable to act alongside?
06:56 - I loved Steven because he's such an open person.
07:00 Mark is guarded, which in turn like made
07:03 me feel a bit guarded, right?
07:06 'Cause you're like, what's gonna come out of this right now?
07:10 And so Steven just felt like light and free.
07:12 And he's such a nuanced, interesting character.
07:16 - The first couple of days,
07:17 or the first maybe couple of weeks,
07:19 Oscar said, "I only wanna be Steven or Mark."
07:24 I think he needed more time to be absolutely confident
07:28 he can do that.
07:29 I know he can, he's a genius.
07:31 So one day we started doing those reflection scenes
07:36 and I just like told him, "Let's try to do it.
07:39 "It doesn't have to be two days.
07:40 "Let's try to do this."
07:41 And all of a sudden, the camera's just panning back
07:44 and forth and he turns from Mark and Steven in seconds
07:47 and he inhibits them and you have to know
07:50 that it's not easy.
07:52 - Oscar is Mark in that moment.
07:55 You'll know it without him even speaking.
07:57 His face changes, his posture changes, everything.
08:01 We were thinking we were gonna have to like
08:04 big changes to wardrobe, like relatively.
08:06 It would have to be like really good space.
08:07 Like, no, no, no.
08:08 Oscar can just do it with literally a look,
08:11 a change in the muscles in his face.
08:14 - I wanna tell you something.
08:16 When he's Steven, he's approachable.
08:18 When he's Mark, he's scary.
08:19 You're just like, "You know what?
08:20 "You're on your own.
08:21 "Direct yourself, it's funny.
08:22 "It's fine, do whatever you want."
08:24 But that's how good he is.
08:27 - When he was interested in this, we said,
08:28 "Oh my gosh, this is an amazing opportunity
08:30 "to tell Moon Knight."
08:31 Because Moon Knight is such a complex character study
08:34 first and foremost, that we needed somebody like Oscar,
08:37 somebody who's at the top of their craft,
08:39 which Oscar obviously is, to portray Mark Spector,
08:42 Steven Grant, Moon Knight, Mr. Knight.
08:44 And he came aboard and it was a breath of fresh air.
08:47 He's amazing.
08:48 May Calamaui is amazing.
08:50 Ethan Hawke is absolutely jaw-dropping as Arthur Harrow.
08:54 Our cast, our crew, our directors,
08:57 this was an embarrassment of riches.
08:58 This was working with a lot of people
09:00 at the top of their game.
09:01 - I remember I would be so tied to the lines,
09:04 and I'd be like, "No, no, no, I have to say this."
09:06 And Oscar would be like, "May,
09:08 "if you understand what you're saying, you can go off."
09:12 And 'cause I'd watch him and him and Ethan
09:14 and they would be so free.
09:15 And I'm like, "How do they do that?
09:17 "This is marvel.
09:18 "How are they?"
09:19 I'm like, "They really trust themselves."
09:21 Then I'm like, I grew up in Bahrain
09:23 and I feel like I'm English ESL,
09:26 like it's my second language,
09:27 but I'm also not perfect in Arabic.
09:30 So I sometimes didn't trust myself
09:33 and I had to give, that was a good,
09:36 that was something I've taken with me into other work
09:38 of like really understand what's going on.
09:41 And then it doesn't matter
09:43 if you fully stick to the script.
09:45 Oh, that's like, of course they want you to,
09:47 but Oscar would give me these nuggets of advice around
09:52 and it was really helpful.
09:53 - You're just as strictly as a fan boy,
09:55 not even someone who works at Marvel.
09:57 I'm so excited about some of the stuff
09:59 that's coming up at Marvel
10:00 that does have a slightly darker edge.
10:02 I think when you do look at the tones
10:04 and the themes that we deal with in "Moon Knight,"
10:07 we talked about the action adventure of it all,
10:10 the intense character study, the horror, the comedy,
10:13 all that, the mind bending journey that he goes on.
10:17 I think he merges well in any corner
10:19 of the Marvel cinematic universe.
10:21 But honestly, when you do look at
10:23 the "Doctor Strangers" of the world,
10:24 when you do look at "Blade,"
10:25 when you do look at all those other shows
10:27 that embrace what goes bump in the night,
10:30 I'm excited about the future that Kevin has in his mind.
10:33 And I can't wait to see where this character
10:34 and many more land.
10:35 - Amazing.
10:36 Well, that's actually gonna be our time today,
10:38 but I really appreciate you taking a moment
10:40 to talk to CinemaBlend.
10:42 - Thank you so much.
10:43 And I'm glad you're a member of my cult, you know?
10:45 - It must be very difficult.
10:47 The voices in your head.
10:50 - See you, girl.
10:51 - I'm stuck.
10:52 [grunts]
10:53 - There's chaos in you.
10:54 [explosion]
10:57 - Embrace it.
10:58 [explosion]
11:00 (electronic music)
11:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]