Ethan Hawkecame to the set ofMoon Knightwith ideas.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I know you signed on toMoon Knightafter getting calls from Oscar Isaac and director Mohamed Diab.
What was it about those conversations that hooked you?
Ethan Hawke in ‘Moon Knight’.Marvel Studios
ETHAN HAWKE:I’ve kind of just followed my gut my whole life.
It’s often a trial and error, and sometimes you make the wrong decision.
It turns out pretty interesting.
Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke in ‘Moon Knight’.Csaba Aknay/Marvel Studios
Plus, I’d already been in talks with Mohamed.
Arthur Harrow has this soft, reassuring charm to him and this delightful physicality.
How did you want to approach that?
I always feel like in some way, the villain has to be the opposite of the hero.
So, if you have a mentally ill hero, what’s the opposite of that?
Well, one version would be a doctor, right?
Somebody trying to alleviate the pain of the world that’s what doctors do.
I started visualizing him kind of as a monk.
I’m always nervous when people think they’re smarter than everybody else it’s generally creepy.
But I thought that was a good place to build from.
If [Moon Knight] has this fractured mind, I would be whole.
If he was the moon and inconstant, I would take a stab at be the sun and constant.
That makes sense, structuring this story around two characters who have this dichotomy.
Yeah, it just made sense to my mind.
They have very unconventional methodologies to how they make this.
Was there anything else that surprised you about makingMoon Knight?
It’s evolving and changing so rapidly.
And they both had bigger budgets than any of the movies that I’ve done.
The medium is changing.
One of the surprises to me was the process.
It was kind of wonderful.
It wasn’t like, “Oh, the director’s in charge now.”
It felt like one thing, one breathing entity, and I’d never seen that happen before.
Now granted, it’s only my second limited series, but I’d never seen that happen.
I didn’t really know that was possible.
It was like a band, and people took turns leading the band, and I really enjoyed that.
It sounds like Oscar really helped develop this project from the beginning.
Was there a particularly memorable day on set with him?
Well, I think the event ofMoon Knightis Oscar’s performance.
I felt that before I flew to Hungary, talking to Oscar and he’s reading all these books.
He was just so passionate about trying to create these different voices.
It was just obvious from the get-go, as soon as I saw him creating this Steven Grant character.
I just thought it was hysterical and surprising and weird.
As the series unravels, it gets even more complicated.
It wasn’t one day that was the event to watch; it was watching his confidence grow.
What do you think has been your biggest challenge throughout this whole process?
Working inside the collective teamwork of it all.
I have a general apprehension towards show-boating stuff.
I don’t ever want to go seeHamletbecause the guy playing Hamlet has some really great idea.
So the biggest challenge was telling an incredibly complicated story well.
I wanted people to want to watch it twice and have it be better the second time around.
That’s the biggest challenge.
The character itself I found really pleasurable and simple.
I don’t know how in the hell we did it, but I do think they work.
It’s a strange show, that way.
All those elements are working in concert with each other.
Part of that is just in the DNA ofMoon Knight.
