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Oscar Isaac plays multiple characters in Moon Knight on Disney+, including Marc Spector, Steven Grant, and Mr. Knight. Juggling all those characters and being an executive producer on the Marvel Cinematic Universe show must have been a lot of work. Thankfully, Oscar Isaac had his brother help him out during the production of Moon Knight.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from Moon Knight Episode 1, “The Goldfish Problem.”]

Oscar Isaac, whose brother helped him play multiple characters in 'Moon Knight,' appears in a scene as Steven Grant. Steven lays in beds and wears a white shirt.
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant | Marvel Studios

Michael Hernandez is a journalist and Oscar Isaac’s brother

Oscar Isaac, who was born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala City, has two siblings — an older sister named Nicole Hernandez Hammer and a younger brother named Michael Hernandez. Nicole is a climate scientist, and Michael is a journalist. To put it mildly, their family is quite successful.

Although Michael is a journalist, Oscar Isaac’s brother has been known to dabble in acting from time to time. And he actually played a significant role in Isaac’s new Marvel Disney+ series, Moon Knight.

How was Oscar Isaac’s brother involved in ‘Moon Knight’?

While speaking with Vanity Fair at the Moon Knight premiere, Oscar Isaac revealed that his brother had a role in Moon Knight. The Marvel production needed to hire a stand-in for Isaac to act opposite of when he was sharing scenes with himself. And Isaac knew the perfect person for the job — his brother, Michael.

“It was wild to have him on set and to play off of,” the actor shared. “He’s a great actor, and we share DNA, so he was very helpful. I couldn’t have done this with anyone else. It was technically challenging to show up and decide which character I was going to play first, and then try to block that out and give my brother notes, and then do the scene, and then switch characters. But he really knows me so well, so we improvised sometimes together. It was so much fun.”

But Moon Knight wasn’t the first time Oscar Isaac and his brother acted together. They also shared the screen in the 2020 short film, The Letter Room.

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The actor is ‘proud’ of the way ‘Moon Knight’ handles mental illness

As the series premiere teases, Moon Knight‘s titular character has dissociative identity disorder. Marc/Steven’s mental illness explains why Oscar Isaac plays multiple characters and why Marvel hired his brother for the series.

“I’m really proud that our show gives this real, honest look at what it’s like to deal with mental health illness in an empathetic way,” Isaac told Vanity Fair. “It’s still shockingly taboo to talk about mental health problems and the struggles that a lot of people have to deal with. To feature a character having mental illness in this big world that is the MCU, I think we really had a rare and unique opportunity to bring awareness and try to destigmatize mental health illness.”

The actor added, “What makes our show different from other MCU movies is that you’re not sitting back and just watching the story unfold. You are within the eyes of Steven and experiencing these unpredictable events that are happening to him. It’s terrifying and true to the psychological horror of not knowing what’s happening and the slow revelations of the truth.”

“The way that we approached the show was making everything about what it’s like to deal with a mental health crisis,” Isaac concluded. “That was the way to respect it, and completely dive into it, and orient the whole story around somebody experiencing this mental crisis, and make the journey one of healing and integration.”

New episodes of Moon Knight air Wednesdays on Disney+.

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