WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Moon Knight Episode 1, "The Goldfish Problem," now streaming on Disney+.
Moon Knight director/executive producer Mohamed Diab revealed that an important character-building scene in the first episode was nearly cut.
"I remember fighting for that [steak] scene. That scene was written by me and [consulting producer] Sarah [Goher], and I knew that I was never going to know Steven unless we had that steak scene," Diab told The Hollywood Reporter. "That is the moment when the audience is going to say, 'It’s the first episode, but I’m in love with this character. It's done.'"
In the scene, Oscar Isaac's Steven Grant has a date at a steak restaurant with one of his London Museum co-workers. When she doesn't arrive, Grant calls her and discovers he's somehow lost two entire days and it is in fact Sunday, not Friday. Now left alone at the restaurant, Grant orders a steak for himself, but as a vegan, he has no idea which cut of meat to choose or how it should be cooked. The scene is both comedic and tragic, and it introduces how deeply Grant is affected by his dissociative identity disorder (DID).
"To me, it was very important to find something to express that DID is not just blackouts and then his life is fine and normal. No, no, no. DID is destroying his life, even his romantic life," Diab explained. "He can't have a lover or a normal relationship with anyone because of what he’s been going through. It’s such a black comedy kind of moment, but it’s the moment that the audience can connect to Steven."
During the first episode, Grant finds a mystery phone and sees the call history is almost exclusively filled with calls from someone named "Layla." Grant is unaware of who this is but when he speaks to her, she seems to recognize his voice, if not his accent, and calls him Marc. The Marc she mistakes him for is the ex-mercenary Marc Spector, another of Grant's alters, and according to Isaac, Grant's DID will cause problems with this romantic relationship, too. "When Layla comes into [Grant's] life and seems like the only person that can help him, his life suddenly starts to both fall apart and light up, because he has someone and she's saying that they're supposed to be married, but she's mistaken him for someone else," Isaac explained.
The first episode of Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes premiere every Wednesday.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter