Oscar Isaac on MOON KNIGHT: How he so effectively acted against himself & where Steven Grant's accent came from #MoonKnight #DisneyPlus @disneyplus

Actor Oscar Isaac recently shared how he so effectively acted against himself in “MOON KNIGHT”

OSCAR ISAAC on MOON KNIGHT

On March 30, the “MOON KNIGHT” 6-part series drops on Disney+. During the recent press junket for “MOON KNIGHT,” Oscar Isaac shared how he approached the scenes where he’s portraying a guy with two other guys living within his head.

Some of the best scenes in the series are the ones where Oscar Issac is acting against himself. We see Steven Grant having conversations with Marc Spector. As an actor, how do you want to approach those scenes where you’re basically playing a guy with two guys living inside his own head.

OSCAR ISAAC Interview: on and acting against himself in MOON KNIGHT

“MOON KNIGHT“ follows British gift shop employee Steven Grant (Oscar Issac). Grant is an intelligent, soft-spoken man who is tormented by his all-too-realistic dreams and a sleep disorder–or so he thinks until he learns that he’s actually Marc Spector and suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Spector, a former mercenary, is the avatar to Khonshu (the Egyptian moon god). Grant’s world is upturned and now deluged with enemies, including cult leader Arthur Harrow.

marc spector/steven grant in moon knight

Isaac: The first step was to hire my brother, Michael Hernandez, to come in and be the other me. That’s the closest thing to me there is on Earth. So he came in and he would play either Steven or Marc, even do the accent and everything, both accents. So that was really helpful to have someone that’s not only a great actor but also shares my DNA to play off of.

Something that I didn’t anticipate was how technically demanding that was going to be, of having to show up and decide which character I was going to play first. And then try to block that out, give my brother notes, and then do the scene, and then switch characters, and then figure it out. Because one of the fun—I think maybe if not THE most fun thing about acting, is acting opposite somebody and letting something spontaneous happen that you didn’t expect. But there wasn’t really an opportunity to do that and still having to try to find what makes it feel spontaneous and not all planned out. So that was challenging.

OSCAR ISAAC on Steven Grants’s accent in MOON KNIGHT

Isaac: It was set in London. And when I asked why, the answer was we just have too many characters in New York. So it seems like let’s just change it up. Let’s make him an expat in London. And so I was like, okay. But then it felt like there was—I mean, I love English humor, like “The Office” and “Stath Lets Flats.”

And there’s just so much of that humor that I just find so funny, and I thought, “There’s an opportunity here to maybe make something. What if we make him English? What if Peter Sellers was approached with a Marvel project, what would he do?” And so I started thinking about that, and that led me to Karl Pilkington from “An Idiot Abroad.” And not so much for the accent but just for his sense of humor where he doesn’t know, you know, you can’t tell if he knows he’s being funny. And then, I thought about the Jewish community in London and where a lot of that community is from and Enfield as an area and sort of listening to accents that are northeast London. And then just committed to that and found this guy that it wasn’t just about accent, but it was also about his timidness but also wanting to connect with people but not quite knowing how. So yeah, Russell Kane was another comedian that I listened to, as well.

“MOON KNIGHT” is streaming exclusively on Disney+ March 30, with new episodes every Wednesday.

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Jana Seitzer is a writer, traveler, podcaster, and geek. Although well-versed in many fictional universes, Star Wars & Marvel have always been her favorites.

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Oscar Isaac on MOON KNIGHT