During a recent interview, the actress May Calamawy shared his experience working with Marvel Studios on the television series moon knight and how they sought to avoid negative stereotypes by bringing cultural authenticity to their character Layla El-Fauoly already the series.
In the comics, Marlene Alraune is the love interest of Marc Spector, a blonde, white woman whose father was an archaeologist. For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, director Muhammad Diab he wanted to make sure that Marvel was committed to changing the character to fit more with what they intended to represent.
She even started out in the script as a white woman and when Sarah and I came on board, they changed her to half Egyptian and we went with that. Let’s make him an Egyptian character and they accepted it.
Co-executive producer Becky Kirsch and co-producer Alex Meenehan were important in making Layla a three-dimensional character in the script, according to supervising producer Beau DeMayo.
Calamawy recalled his conversations with Diab about her character, also praising Feige for allowing him the freedom to make whatever changes he felt were necessary to keep Layla from being filled with stereotypes.
Anytime I felt uncomfortable, I would go talk to Mohamed and his wife, and I love how Kevin Feige gave us the freedom to share that, to let people know, ‘This is not what it is, if we do that, it’s going to be a stereotype’. I realized pretty early on that this is a space where my voice was going to be heard and that’s the best feeling.
The actress was also adamant about avoiding any comparisons to classic heroines like Lara Croft, as she didn’t want to copy something that had been done so many times before. She thought of the strength that comes from Middle Eastern women and wanted to bring that same feeling to her own character.
I was careful not to take inspiration from someone from the West because they wanted me to bring out my side. In the Middle East, I find that women have a very soft force in them. And I thought, ‘How can I put that in it? Why should I sit back and copy what I think Angelina Jolie would do? Every woman I meet is a bunch of dichotomies, and I wanted to bring that up.