news ‘Moon Knight’ Director Begged Ethan Hawke to Not Read the Script Before Joining Marvel Series

Moon Knight” director Mohamed Diab knew that Ethan Hawke joining the MCU was a big deal. So why not encourage the Oscar winner to craft a unique take on a comic book villain?

Diab, who directs four out of the six Disney+ episodes that premiere on the streamer March 30, revealed in a press conference that he barred Hawke from reading the “Moon Knight” script before joining the series.

“Everyone sees [Ethan] as this great legendary, independent film actor, and joining the superhero world is something big,” Diab said, as reported by Screen Rant. “So when [lead star] Oscar [Isaac] approached him and then I talked to him about it, we pitched him the idea, but I told him, ‘Please don’t read the script.’ Not that the script is bad, but when you work with him, you have to get from him.”

Diab continued, “He told me, ‘This was the first time in 35 years that I signed something without reading a script.’ And he did it.”

Hawke plays cult leader Arthur Harrow, who is associated with the “Devourer of the Dead” Egyptian god Ammit. Arthur goes up against Isaac’s Marc Spector, a mercenary with Dissociative Identity Disorder who is linked to fellow god Moon Knight.

Hawke additionally revealed to Collider that his Marvel debut has been a long time coming. “There’d been a few dances in the past, there’s been a couple parts that I wanted or was interested in that they weren’t interested in me for,” the “Good Lord Bird” star said. “And there were some other parts that I didn’t feel like I could be successful in, but this one just felt right.”

His interpretation of character Arthur was like “putting Jimmy Swaggart, Leo Tolstoy, [Fidel] Castro, the Dalai Lama, and Josef Mengele into a blender,” the “Before Sunrise” icon previously shared. “That was the fun of it: What if Steve Jobs was a bad guy?”
Co-star Isaac also gave his own twist on the Marvel “Moon Knight” hero in the “character study” series. The “Star Wars” alum presented a more “fumbling” take on his alter ego and also changed the character’s accent, despite the script not “necessarily written that way at all.”
 
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