Moon Knight, which just premiered on Disney Plus last week, marks a major milestone for Marvel Studios, as the title character is the first superhero in the MCU to openly deal with mental health issues. Specifically, it sees Steven Grant — played by Oscar Isaac — discover that he’s really Marc Spector, a super-powered mercenary who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. We meet both of these personalities, who couldn’t be more different from each other, in the pilot episode.
This multilayered role arguably made the part of Moon Knight much more of a mountain to climb than most Marvel heroes. While speaking to Digital Spy, Isaac opened up about the “incredible challenge” of playing the character, admitting that he wasn’t “comfortable” switching between Steven and Marc at first. This led the Star Wars star to make a request to producers that would help him get his head around the many sides of Marc Spector.
“You know, there’s a lot of fun in it as well, you know, figuring it out,” Isaac said. “But one of the things I did is, because I wasn’t totally comfortable yet with switching between the two, I asked if we could start with Steven. And could we just film for a couple of scenes with Steven first? Or at least, one week, we’ll do all Steven, and then come in the next week and do Marc, just to give me a chance to really wrap my mind around it.”
Isaac went on to say that tackling Steven and Marc in this way made sure that his performance didn’t “feel like a party trick” but allowed for them to “really feel like these were really fully formed individuals.” He continued:
“And so they thankfully gave me the space to do that. And as the shoot went on, and I got more comfortable or secure in what I was doing, I became more flexible between being able to switch between the two.”
After establishing the characters this way, Isaac was later able to switch between the two with ease later in the shoot, although he stressed that it took some work to get to that point.
“And by the end, I could do it in the same take, in the same moment,” Isaac concluded. “I could switch between the two, and it could just be something as simple as, you know, the shoulders drop, or it’s in the eyes. That was a real journey, to get to that place.”
Isaac’s commitment to portraying Spector’s alternate selves with integrity echoes what showrunner Jeremy Slater has said before about how the cast and crew aimed for Moon Knight to have a “positive message about mental health.” Slater promised that his team “did their homework” about DiD to make certain Moon Knight was “ultimately good and uplifting.”
After just one episode, which was pretty mature and violent, we’re still waiting for the uplifting part, but it’s already clear that Oscar Isaac gave the role his all.
Marvel’s Moon Knight continues Wednesdays on Disney Plus.