‘Moon Knight’ Composer Hesham Nazih Talks The ‘Musically Inviting’ World Of The New Marvel Series

Literal gods walk the mortal plane. Cult leaders attempt to summon ancient evils. And a former mercenary grapples with dissociative identity disorder and his debt to an Ancient Egyptian deity of the night sky.

At once thrilling, emotional, hilarious, and terrifying, Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight is a narrative and visual playground that grabs the comic book genre by the horns, or, in this case, the skeletal bird head of Khonshu. It’s a delight not only for die-hard audiences, but also for the creatives who helped bring the new series to life.

Creatives like composer Hesham Nazih, who describes the project as “musically inviting” and “daring” over Zoom.

He was brought onto Moon Knight (the composer’s first major English-language endeavor) by Mohamed Diab, a fellow native of Egypt who, in addition to directing four out of the show’s six episodes, served as an executive producer.

“I’d never met Mohamed Diab before,” Nazih admits. “Of course, I’ve known him in Egypt from his films, but not in person. He did not appear in the picture until everything was settled with Marvel and then they told me I had to travel to Budapest to meet with him, where he was filming. This was our first meeting, and it was fun.”

As expected, security was tighter than bandages on a mummy. “We were not allowed to say anything or to mention anything to anyone. So I only told my wife, I have to confess,” Nazih says of the strict no-spoilers policy with a chuckle. “I have a son and he’s so much into Marvel comic books and he’s an expert on Moon Knight. I had to keep everything away from him. I didn’t say anything until the last moment when he discovered from the news that his father is writing the music for Moon Knight.”

^{***WARNING! The following contains certain plot spoilers for the show!***}

Developed for television by head writer and executive producer Jeremy Slater (a veteran of such Netflix
NFLX
titles as the live-action Death Note movie and The Umbrella Academy), Moon Knight tackles the character of Marc Spector (Star Wars’ Oscar Isaac), whose history goes back almost five decades. Once a mercenary-for-hire, Spector was left for dead in the Egyptian desert and would have perished had he not struck a deal to mete out vengeance against the wicked as the earthbound avatar of the moon god known as Khonshu (voiced by Mythic Quest’s F. Murray Abraham).

The show’s plot draws heavily from the acclaimed comic book run on the character from writer Jeff Lemire and artist Greg Smallwood, in which Marc questions the very nature of his reality. Profoundly traumatized over the death of his brother when the two were young boys, Marc developed an alter ego — the mild-mannered Steven Grant — to cope with the immense the guilt thrust upon him by his grieving mother.

These dueling personas vie for control of one body, creating an added obstacle in the struggle against cult leader Arthur Harrow (Boyhood’s Ethan Hawke), who wants to free the goddess Ammit and unfairly judge the souls of humanity. To that end, Moon Knight aims for a genuinely ambitious narrative scope — one that starts out on the rainy streets of London and ends up against the backdrop of the Great Pyramids of Giza. Naturally, the score had to match those grand storytelling aspirations.

“This show is massive in every sense,” Nazih says. “Emotionally, in action, adventures, and everything. So we talked a lot about it, but we touched the matter of the Egyptian aspect of the music. [Mohamed] was really clear and straight about it, he wanted the music to sound authentically Egyptian in the sense that he did not want me to mimic anything.”

In particular, Diab requested that the composer to do what he does best. “I have a way of presenting what is musically authentic and original in an unusual or unexpected way,” Nazih continues. “That’s what he liked, he did not want to do traditional, classical Egyptian music nor, of course, the Western perspective of the Egyptian style.”

With its exploration of mystical artifacts and tomb-raiding villains looking to conquer the world via otherworldly means, Moon Knight is, without question, a loving throwback to the swashbuckling adventures of yesteryear. The musical imprint left by those iconic franchises inspired by the old film serials of the 1930s and ‘40s — Indiana Jones and The Mummy immediately come to mind — are just too tantalizing to ignore.

“Of course, I’m influenced and inspired by all these great scores,” Nazih says. “By John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and John Barry and Ennio Morricone and all those great composers who have shaped my musical culture.”

The main theme (listen below), which wears a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque wonder and grandeur on its sleeve, served as Nazih’s entry point into the rest of the score.

Likening the process to sculpting a statue, he explains that he looked at “how the character is built and he is Steven Grant and he is Khonshu and how they met and the reason why Khonshu has chosen Marc as his avatar. All of that and all the storylines and sub-lines and action lines. I put these all together and tried hard to melt all these elements in one musical pot that is the main theme of the show. I always knew it was gonna make it a lot clearer for me to build the whole score around this main theme.”

While he’s enjoyed a prolific career that spans two decades of writing and composing film scores, Nazih states that working on a superhero title is “totally something else.” He continues: “This intense moment of the ordinary person becomes a superhero and the moments of transformation and the actions and what a superhero really does and everything, all of that, is, musically, so unusual in the best of ways.”

Despite this leap out of Nazih’s usual comfort zone, Moon Knight feels tailor-made for the composer in the same way that it feels tailor-made for Mohamed Diab.

To ensure a respectful depiction of Egyptian culture (both ancient and modern), Marvel Studios hired crew members who actually hail from Egypt. Nowhere is the importance of this onscreen representation more apparent than in the finale when Marc’s wife, Layla El-Faouly (Ramy’s May Calamawy), strikes a temporary deal with the goddess Taweret and takes on the mantle of Marvel’s first Egyptian superhero: Scarlet Scarab. It’s a moment sure to inspire viewers in Egypt and around the world.

“[Scoring music] for someone who has an Egyptian background is way more exceptional. I was like, ‘Oh, wow!’ I cannot fully describe how enjoyable this moment was,” Nazih concludes. “Not because I’m Egyptian, but it’s a lovely character, it’s a lovely persona, and what a great actress May was in the role. It’s not just because I’m Egyptian, it’s because it was nicely done in all aspects. So yeah, I would have loved it just the same if I wasn’t Egyptian … That’s the beauty of art and the art of storytelling. You just relate to the character, no matter where you are from.”

All six episodes of Moon Knight are now streaming on Disney+. Click here to read the Forbes Entertainment review.