Moon Knight Star May Calamawy Reveals the Surprising Way She Got Her Audition

By Kofi Outlaw

Marvel's Moon Knight has exposed actress May Calamawy to a whole new level of mainstream fandom, as she plays Layla El-Faouly, the estranged wife and partner-in-crime (literally) of Marc Spector/Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac). In a recent interview, Calamawy talked about how she made the jump from projects like Hulu's Ramy to Marvel's Moon Knight, which turned out to be a rather unorthodox audition story. 

Long story short: Instagram got May Calamawy her role in Marvel's Moon Knight 

[Director] Mohamed Diab's wife Sarah [Goher, who also served as a consulting producer on Moon Knight] messaged me on Instagram, like, "My husband's interested in you for this Marvel show," Calamawy explained to EW. "I asked my manager if it was real — because you get a lot of weird stuff on Instagram! She did some fishing, and she's like, "Okay, it's real, and I got you an audition. There wasn't much information about it."

That's not really a formula for success in acting that any young hopefuls out there can mimic – but however the stars manage to align themselves, right? 

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 She may have gotten through the door thanks to IG, but May Calamawy still had to ultimately earn her sport in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the traditional way: 

"For the audition itself, I was really nervous, and I really wanted to do well – because I cared, but I also didn't have that much information. So, I had fun with it," said Calamawy. "Two weeks later, I had a chemistry read with Oscar, and then three days later, my manager called me. She was like, "Have you heard anything?" I was like, "No." She says, "Alright. Well, I have. You got it." And then we both cried on the phone. [Laughs] My boyfriend was also there, and he cried. It was really cute."

This is a timely interview, as Moon Knight Episode 3 has just aired on Disney+. That third episode brought us some of the most intense "chemistry" between Marc Spector (and Steven) and Laylay that we've seen in the series. 

After two episodes, it also seems abundantly clear that Marvel fans are loving Calamawy's Layla – both for her badass character (smart, independent, formidable fighter) and her strange romantic triangle with Marc Spector and Steven Grant. In that context, we'd love to see how that chemistry test with Oscar Isaac went down...

Moon Knight is streaming new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+. 

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