Moon Knight is Disney+’s latest Marvel series and fans are already buzzing about how different it is from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Starring Oscar Issac, he plays Steven Grant, “a mild-mannered gift-shop employee, who becomes plagued with blackouts and memories of another life. Steven discovers he has dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with mercenary Marc Spector. As Steven/Marc’s enemies converge upon them, they must navigate their complex identities while thrust into a deadly mystery among the powerful gods of Egypt.”

For Issac, to play a character that isn’t one that is widely known in the Marvel mainstream was an opportunity in his eyes because people aren’t as familiar with Moon Knight and it presents a chance for him to leave his mark.

“It was actually both of those things,” he said in a recent interview with Shadow and Act. “…I mean, the fact that I hadn’t heard of the character before [laughs]. Then when I did a deep dive into the comics, I saw that it had changed so much, since its first appearance in 1975. Now, depending on the writer of the artists, they would focus on different things that they thought were interesting. So the fact that he’s so little known [and] definitely not a mainstream character, it felt like there was a lot of freedom to create that character to focus on the stuff that we thought was the most interesting, that I felt was the most exciting to play, and, and kind of formed the story around those things.

As Issac plays multiple personalities of one man, Marvel has been open about consulting with mental health professionals in regards to the show and the portrayal. Issac says it was challenging from many perspectives.

He explained to us, “I think that really the most challenging aspect was the technical part of shooting with myself because usually, you show up, the other actors are doing something else, and that informs how you want to play it– and it surprises you and it keeps things really fresh. But having to show up and decide what I want to do and how I’m going to react to it as the other character and having to rehearse not that way…that was really challenging. And sometimes I’d have to remember what I did, but obviously, I wouldn’t be there. So I’d have to have the the the lines coming to me in my ear with like a little earpiece. And I’d have to remember where I had moved and try to, like move my eyes as if I was looking at my other self when there was nothing there. And that it just was the math around that was really, technically challenging.”

New Moon Knight episodes drop Wednesdays on Disney+.

Watch the full interview below:

Oscar Issac

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