Oscar Isaac is one of the actors of the hour. While he’s no stranger to blockbuster movies, his latest turn in the Marvel series Moon Knight has given him room to really stretch his acting chops as he portrays a character with multiple personalities. It’s made for some of the most gripping Marvel TV to date, especially in last week’s penultimate episode “Asylum.”
The season finale of Moon Knight lands on Disney+ tomorrow, and Isaac is doing his best to promote it. Although he’s starred in everything from Star Wars to Dune to Marvel, Isaac still has a reputation as more of an indie actor stylistically. With Moon Knight’s success, it’s the perfect time for him to reflect on the journey that brought him to the series.
Isaac recently talked to The New York Times about some of his past roles. Perhaps the most maligned of his films is the big budget superhero flick X-Men: Apocalypse. Isaac played the titular villain, the first-ever mutant who had survived for centuries and now wants to bring about the end of civilization. The Times asked Isaac if he “disowned” that film after its poor reception.
“I don’t disown it,” Isaac said. He chooses to focus on the positives, like getting to play Apocalypse, a character he loved as a kid, as well as working with stellar actors like Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Nonetheless, he did admit that he wished it was a “better film” and that they “would have taken care of the character a little better.”
Oscar Isaac convinced Ethan Hawke to do Moon Knight
Isaac also visited Late Night with Seth Meyers last week, where he once again talked up Moon Knight and how great it was to work with director Mohamed Diab. He also discussed convincing MCU guru Keven Feige to let him try out the British accent he uses to play Steven Grant.
But by far the most interesting thing to come out of Isaac’s interview is that he claims credit for getting Ethan Hawke on board to play cult leader villain Arthur Harrow. Isaac recalled how Hawke came up during a brainstorm session with Mohamed Diab before a chance encounter set the wheels of Hollywood history turning.
“We started talking about it and I was watching The Good Lord Bird at the time, and Ethan’s just incredible in it. And I said , ‘you know, this guy would be amazing for this cult-leader bad guy that we’re developing,’ and he said that he had actually been working on something with Ethan and that we should do that,” Isaac recalled. “And then that day I went to a coffee shop, and there was Ethan with his daughter getting coffee. And I approached him and we talked for a little bit. He didn’t know who the hell I was at all. His daughter had to tell him.”
"So a couple days later we went to Brooklyn Inn, and had many tequilas, and I convinced him to be the bad guy in Moon Knight. That opening scene in the first episode, that’s all him. He came up with that.”"
The more we hear about the behind-the-scenes stuff on this show, the more it sounds like it all came together just right. How different might Moon Knight have been if Oscar Isaac or Ethan Hawke didn’t get coffee at the same place? Thankfully, we’ll never know.
Moon Knight’s season finale drops tomorrow on Disney+.
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h/t The A.V. Club