Moon Knight star Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, Sinister) recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly on his role in the upcoming MCU series. Hawke is set to play Arthur Harrow, a cult leader who will be an antagonist in the series.
“I’ve always had this theory that when you teach an audience how to see the demon inside you, they don’t unsee it for the rest of your career,” he told EW on his past reluctance to play a dark character. “Jack Nicholson can be playing an accountant and you’re still waiting for him to explode like he did in The Shining. It changes your relationship to a performer, so I’ve always been nervous about it. But I realized I’m on the other side of 50 and it’s time to put a new tool in the tool kit. Villains might be my future.”
This will be his first time starring in a superhero project, which he was apprehensive on taking. However, according to Entertainment Weekly, it only took a run-in with co-star Oscar Isaac (Dune, X-Men: Apocalypse) at a Brooklyn coffee shop to sway his decision.
“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,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “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 also compared his role to playing Hamlet. “Ninety percent of people there have an opinion about how Hamlet should be played,” he said. “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.”
Hawke’s character in the series is said to be inspired by the likes of cult leader David Koresh and psychiatrist Carl Jung. “Your gut leads you,” he told EW. “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.”
Moon Knight is set to premiere on March 30 on Disney+.