MOON KNIGHT Director Mohamed Diab Talks About Directing Oscar Isaac and His Multiple Personalities

Moon Knight debuted its second episode this week, delving further into the lore of this complex character. Keeping track of what’s happening is tricky for the viewers, but I would imagine it’s even trickier for the actor who is playing the role with multiple personalities.

One of the show’s directors and executive producer, Mohamed Diab, sat down with Marvel.com to discuss directing this unique role, and he explained:

“At the beginning, it wasn't clear to us who Marc is and who Steven is. Oscar at the beginning wanted only to [embody] Steven a day and Marc a day, never on the same day.” 

This was all to keep things straight for Isaac, along with the crew bringing both Marc and Steven to life. But Diab continued to say:

“After a while there were a couple of scenes where he was talking in the mirror, and I told him, ‘Why don't you try [both characters]?’ I kept pushing him and giving him encouragement. All of a sudden, he did this magical thing.”

 The “magical thing” he described was the actor being able to comfortably slip between both characters, even to do it in the same take. He was moving from one character to the next seamlessly. Diab continued:

“When the camera is just panning all of a sudden, he's someone else. Once he's Marc, you see him getting taller. When he's Steven, he's so approachable. Oscar actually wanted to go back and do [some scenes] again, the shots that he did on different days. He actually wanted to do it in the same take because he became [both characters]. In all of the times that came afterwards, that's how we did it. In those seconds, he's someone else. It's inhabiting a different character and being someone else, taking on a different demeanor and a different accent. It's not easy, but he did it. He's a genius.”

The directors of Episode 2, Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, came in knowing that Steven and Marc’s ability to communicate with his alter-ego was already established. They got to witness it for the first time in the scene after Steven has broken into Marc’s storage locker, and then later when Marc finally has control of the body and angrily yells at Steven about everything going on with Khonshu.

Benson talked about the experience in the same interview, saying: 

“The visual approach was really based around the idea of Oscar telling us like, ‘hey, I feel comfortable just going between these two characters at this point,’ so we were able to just do really old school techniques of just literally— camera goes off of Oscar playing Marc and on to— and now he's Steven in the mirror. We could just do all of that on camera, because he felt secure enough with it. It was something he showed up on day one able just to do. You would look at him without him even speaking, and you'd know which character he was.”

These first two instances of the back-and-forth conversation between the characters also establishes exactly what kind of relationship they have. Moorhead then continued the conversation, saying:

“They don't just have an antagonistic relationship; they have this kind of brotherly relationship where they bicker because they want different things, but they also care for each other in strange ways. They have a shared history. That was how we approached both the storage locker scene where Steven directly talks to Marc at length for the first time, and then where they really bear each other's souls in the broken pyramid mirror scene.”

Moorhead went on to talk about Mr. Knight in the episode, revealing:

“Mr. Knight is Steven Grant's vision of a cool guy, a svelte man. Being gifted the suit doesn't mean that you are gifted fighting abilities. And if you don't have skills, then you are going to lose this fight. We built everything around making losing the fight frightening and scary.”

And when addressing the comedic moment that we see Steven trying to land a classic superhero pose, Moorhead said:

“We talked to Oscar about that exact moment. He said, ‘I want to fall over.’ Like, land as if he’s a super hero and then just fall over. And that gelled the whole thing for us.”

Benson added:

“It also should be noted that falling over bit is one of many points in the show that was Oscar finding the best joke for the moment. Oscar is obviously good at a lot of things, but what people maybe don't know is that he's a really, really funny guy. You can tell when he's going to like a joke, because he's one of those people who laughs when he's telling it to you and you get caught up in the infectiousness of it.”

If nothing else, this episode did solidify that Isaac is the exact talented actor for this job. He pulls off the multiple characters and their quirks and nuances in such a believable and likable way. I can’t wait to see what comes next in the story.

Moon Knight episodes 1 and 2 are available to watch on Disney+, and episodes 3-6 will air Wednesdays through May 4th.