Moon Knight Star May Calamawy on Creating New MCU Character

To this point, the Marvel Studios shows that have been released on Disney+ have starred existing Marvel Cinematic Universe characters and brought a lot of prominent Marvel Comics characters into the franchise. Moon Knight is a little different. This new series doesn’t feature any existing MCU characters in prominent roles, with Oscar Isaac’s titular anti-hero making his debut. Moon Knight is also looking to create its own lore by creating brand new characters.

May Calamawy stars alongside Isaac and Ethan Hawke in Moon Knight, playing Layla El-Faouly, Marc Spector’s wife and fellow adventurer. ComicBook.com spoke with Calamawy recently about her new role and the pressure of creating a brand new character in the MCU.

“I felt so much pressure in the beginning and I was really intimidated, because I genuinely didn’t know what would be the best direction for her, and I wanted to do justice to all the work that’s been done,” Calamawy explained. “Every character is so nuanced and rich, and I’m like, ‘How do I bring this? And what is gonna serve the story and Moon Knight?’ And also important for me to create a character who has her own arc, not just in service of the man. And luckily I had just incredible people that I was working with, and Layla took a village, I’ll say that. I worked so much with Mohammed Diab and his wife. Oscar and Ethan were so helpful. My stunt doubles were like, I needed them, you know, so we found her.”

Layla is an incredibly important part of Moon Knight‘s story, but she’s also on a journey of her own throughout the series. When Calamawy was first up for the role, however, Marvel didn’t give her too much information to go on.

“When I auditioned, it was like, ‘Egyptian woman,’ and I was like, ‘I’ll take it,’” Calamawy said. “But it was as we were going along that the mysteries were unfolding, I was just on the ride with it. It was cool.”

Moon Knight will establish Layla as a character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so there are quite a few possibilities for the character to return in future shows and movies, depending on how this new series ends.

Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight debuts on Disney+ on March 30th.