Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, Preview, streaming, Trailer, TV | Tagged: ethan hawke, moon knight, oscar isaac, preview, trailer

Moon Knight: Ethan Hawke on Villain Type He Finds "Terrifying" & More

After spending our last update on Disney+ and Marvel Studios' Oscar Isaac (Dune, "Star Wars VII-IX") & Ethan Hawke (Training Day, The Good Lord Bird)-starring live-action series Moon Knight offering up what most likely will be some serious random speculation on our parts (you can check out what we're talking about here), we decided to go back to letting the folks who actually made the series offer their two cents. This time around, Hawke explains to EW that he was a little hesitant at first about stepping his toe into the superhero film world until Isaac helped convince him to give it a shot. "I was always a little apprehensive; there's a certain kind of actor that really excels in that universe, and I'm still not sure I'm one of them," admitted Hawke.

"But then Oscar asked me, and I really respect him. And I knew that if he went in, he was going to go all in, and it's fun to do any genre with people who are all in," Hawke continued. "Mohamed Diab, I really like his films, he's a special director. So it just became about the project, and it wasn't an intellectual decision at all; it was like, 'Oh, let's do something cool with these guys.' And the more I learned about the Moon Knight, the more turned on I got, because it's so much better than trying to create something that the audience already has a big agenda with. Like, if you do Batman or Superman or Hulk, any of these famous ones, the fans have so many preconceived things that they want from it. It's like playing Hamlet. Ninety percent of people there have an opinion about how Hamlet should be played. I love doing Shakespeare in front of student audiences because they don't have a big agenda. They didn't see how much better Patrick Stewart did it than you. They're just accepting of how you did it. And with Moon Knight, we get to create a world and a character. The fan in me always enjoys the first movie. I love learning about how the hell Captain America came to be — those are my favorite parts of the story."

With psychiatrist Carl Jung & cult leader David Koresh serving as inspirations for his character Arthur Harrow, Hawke wasn't looking to play a cliched "big bad" but someone more complex. "The uber-rich villain mastermind isn't interesting to me. I love the ones who believe that they're a good person and that's why they have to kill you. That I find really terrifying," Hawke explained. For a chance to rewatch the trailer (like you need an excuse, right?) along with Isaac and Hawke, check out the following mini-featurette below (with the series set to premiere on March 30th):

And here's a look back at the official trailer for Disney+ and Marvel Studios' Moon Knight that was released earlier this week:

Disney+ and Marvel Studios' "Moon Knight" is a new globetrotting action-adventure series featuring a complex vigilante who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. The multiple identities who live inside him find themselves thrust into a deadly war of the gods against the backdrop of modern and ancient Egypt.

Joining Isaac and Hawke in the streaming series is May Calamawy (Hulu's Ramy) and the late Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising), with Mohamed Diab (Clash, Cairo 678) being joined by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Synchronic) in the directors' circle. Here's a look back at the first Instagram post showing Isaac in full-on, ass-kicking training mode:

During an interview with The Ringer, Hawke made it pretty clear that three big reasons why he chose to join the Moon Knight cast were his desire to work with Isaac and Diab (his first two), and that the series was focusing on one of Marvel Comics' lesser-known superhero (the "trifecta" reason). "Well, it's where I'm at as an actor. A lot of it, to be honest, I love the fact that Moon Knight is a lesser-known story and allows more creative freedom. The director is Mohamed Diab and he's a brilliant guy. I've seen a couple of his movies and wanted to work with him anyway. I had a meeting with him about another project of his own. And a lot of it is Oscar, to me, to be honest with you. I find him to be a very exciting player in my field. I like what he's doing with his life. He reminds me of the actors, when I first arrived at New York, that I looked up to," Hawke said during the interview.

Hawke continued, "Oscar's younger than me, and I like the way he carries himself, and I like the way he thinks," he continued. "And in general, good things happen when you're in the room with people that you like the way they think, right? Mohammed's gonna do a good job, he's a serious person. I don't know if you guys have seen his films, but he's a serious artist and you have to speak to your time, right? You can't pretend you don't live in the time period that you live in. You have to try to make your time period better." Here's a look at the interview – with Moon Knight talk starting at the 3:35 mark:

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