Exclusive: Moon Knight's Meghan Kasperlik on avoiding Egyptian stereotypes
Moon Knight costume designer Meghan Kasperlik has opened up about how they tried to avoid Egyptian stereotypes on the show.
The recent Marvel series, which stars Oscar Isaac, prominently features Egyptian representation – which hasn't necessarily had the best track record in Hollywood.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Kasperlik addressed the expectation ahead of the show, admitting she really wanted "to make sure that people feel that whatever the storyline is, everyone is going into that storyline representing what that story is".
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"[Director] Mohamed [Diab] being Egyptian, it was extraordinarily important to [him] – he has so much pride in his Egyptian culture and Egyptian people, and he was very adamant from day one that the Egyptians were represented in a way of: this is not Hollywood in a sense of, like, fable-ising how Egyptians have been represented in other scenarios. He wanted it to be very real," she said.
"[Layla El-Faouly actress] May [Calamawy] is part-Egyptian, and has spent time in Egypt. Mohamed's assistant is Egyptian. So I spoke to her about a lot of things, about younger women being represented in Egypt: 'As an American, this is what I'm reading, but please tell me the reality of what living in Egypt is like, or what going to school in Egypt is like.'
"I wanted to know all those things," the designer continued. "I spoke with Mohamed's wife and a few other people that were working on the production as far as representation.
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"So that was always very, very important. And I have to credit Marvel because they were very much like: 'We need to represent Egypt in the way that Mohamed wants to showcase Egypt and reality, and not fable-ise what the story is.'"
Kasperlik went on to note that it "was very important that you had an Egyptian director driving that for us to showcase this".
She added: "I do a tremendous amount of research for any project that I do. So, you know, really researching not only Ancient Egypt – so we have the moments of Khonshu, and how we bring that into the Moon Knight character – but also in discussing [the range of what] Egypt is."
Moon Knight is streaming on Disney+.
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