‘Moon Knight’: Oscar Isaac thought the Marvel show was too risky

For most actors, receiving an offer to play a character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be a career highlight. But when the entertainment juggernaut reached out to Oscar Isaac about “Moon Knight,” the actor was a bit skeptical.

Isaac recently starred in The Hollywood Reporter’s Drama Actor Roundtable with Quincy Isaiah, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brian Cox and Michael Keaton. When asked what role felt like the biggest risk of his career, Isaac brought up the limited Marvel series.

“‘Moon Knight’ felt that way,” Isaac said. “Like, ‘Man, I want to go down hard with this thing.’ Just the level of embarrassment it would be once you’ve thrown a cloak on, do you know what I mean? is like, ‘Holy shit, I’m really doing this thing’. ”

Isaac already had plenty of blockbuster experience after starring in three “Star Wars” movies and “X-Men: Apocalypse.” So with nothing left to prove in that space, he was only interested in making “Moon Knight” if he could weave his own artistic sensibilities into the project.

“And the trick with this was, ‘Can I do both?’” Isaac said. “Can you smuggle in the thing that matters to me, the reason I like to do it, so every morning when the alarm goes off, I could look forward to getting to work and not just saying, ‘I’m have to get through this to get that check or whatever. ‘ And it seemed like this was an opportunity, perhaps because of the TV landscape, where there seems to be a lot more risk-taking, to do this bizarre thing that happened to be the case with a superhero genre film. “

The question of whether he could balance art and commerce on “Moon Knight” was not an easy question for Isaac to answer, and the actor remembered to go back and forth before finally deciding to accept the offer.

“It was so much about, ‘Is this the dumbest thing? Is it a smart thing?’” He said. “It was such a mental pain just to make the decision.”

All episodes of “Moon Knight” are currently being streamed on Disney +.

Sign up: Stay on top of the latest groundbreaking movie and TV news! Sign up for our email newsletters here.