‘Moon Knight’ Director Mohamed Diab on How Important Capturing Egypt Right Was for Them
Moon Knight is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and director Mohamed Diab is making the press rounds to help promote it.
By now, episode 2 has already debuted on the streaming service. Make sure you check out our non-spoiler review of the first four episodes here, two of which (1 and 3) were directed by Diab. The premiere episode dropped last week to splendid reviews and very positive audience reception, and delivered strong viewing numbers according to Samba TV. The company, which tracks US-based television households, recorded a larger number of viewers than for the premiere of Hawkeye, around the same amount that tuned into The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though they weren’t as strong as Loki‘s. It must be stressed, though, that Samba TV is not the be-all and end-all of streaming numbers, as they only track a certain number of households and only television devices.
Diab, who directed that first episode, recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the show, and how he approached it. As he told Variety last week, one of his major goals was to avoid the classic Hollywood clichés of Egypt and the Arab world. He said:
“A big part of our pitch was avoiding the orientalist look, which always dehumanizes us. It shows us as exotic, where women are submissive and men are evil. And it wasn’t only about representation of the people, but of the place itself.”
He also lamented the fact that most Hollywood movies that are at least partially set in Egypt do not shoot a frame of footage there, something vital to avoiding classic stereotypes. Moon Knight, for a variety of reasons, wasn’t able to shoot in Egypt either (they mostly filmed in Budapest), but that didn’t stop the creative team from hiring many Egyptians so that the show felt as authentic as possible. That included of course Hesham Nazih, who composed the most iconic score of any Marvel show on Disney Plus, save for maybe Loki.
Nazih was apparently asked to compose the music for the show after he scored a concert accompanying The Pharaoh’s Golden Parade in April 2021, which was a cultural celebration in which 22 ancient mummies were transported from the old Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the newly built National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. As Nazih described it to THR:
“It was a very big event on the streets of Cairo, and it was all over the news. And a few days later my agent received an email from Marvel asking for a demo reel.”
Diab explained that he simply admired how he “encompasses authentic Egyptian elements in a very contemporary way.” He added:
“It’s so Egyptian, but it’s also something that everyone can relate to. [Cairo is a] big urban city that never sleeps, with its own music scene, and with plenty in common with the West.”
Another Egyptian collaborator that Diab brought in for the journey was Ahmed Hafez, one of three editors that worked on the series, and with whom he’s collaborated before. Moon Knight‘s costume designer Meghan Kasperlik and production designer Stefania Cella were not Egyptian, and Diab would apparently be constantly explaining to them the many problems he had with Hollywood movies depicting Egypt and any Arab country for that matter. He gave an example:
“With something like a woman’s veil, for example, you tie it in a certain way, and it puts you in a completely different country.”
Diab also campaigned for Egyptian-Palestinian actor and Ramy star May Calamawy to play the role of Layla, who we met in the second episode after only hearing her voice in the first. Apparently, he also pushed for Egyptian-British actor Khalid Abdulla, who we had not heard was in this series. Abdulla will soon be seen in The Crown as Princess Diana’s boyfriend. He does not appear on the IMDb page of the show, or on the production briefing from Disney Plus. Diab estimates that 90 percent of the Egyptian roles in the show are played by Egyptian actors, and he actually flew in major actors from the country to play small parts in the series. He said:
“Most of the extras we got were Egyptians living in Budapest, and some of them I swear were tearing up, telling me that they hadn’t been home in five years and saying how close it looked.”
Should Moon Knight be renewed for a second season, he hopes they can finally go to Egypt to shoot:
“We’re very, very, very eager to shoot in Egypt, because no matter how good we made it, Egypt is much more beautiful.”
Moon Knight airs new episodes every Wednesday, so stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
