Warning! Contains mild spoilers for Moon Knight episode 5

Moon Knight star Antonia Salib didn’t know she was auditioning to play a hippo in Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ series. The most recent series taking place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe follows Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector and Steven Grant, two alters within a Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) system that share the same body. The mercenary alter, Marc, made a life-saving pact with the Egyptian moon god, Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham). The series also stars Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow, the late Gaspard Ulliel as Anton Mogart, and May Calamawy as Layla El-Faouly.

In episode 4, “The Tomb,” Harrow shoots Marc/Steven in the chest before the pair awake in a psychiatric hospital where their ally Layla is a fellow patient and the villainous Harrow is their doctor. If that wasn’t disorienting enough for audiences, the episode ends with the introduction of a larger-than-life hippopotamus. In episode 5, “Asylum,” this friendly hippopotamus reveals herself to be Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of mothers and children responsible for guiding souls through Duat so that they may arrive at the Field of Reeds—as long as their heart is balanced when weighed against the feather of Maat. The episode sees Marc/Steven relive traumatic memories as Taweret does her best to help. Now, Salib has opened up about auditioning for the role of the now-fan-favorite hippopotamus.

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In a conversation with Marvel, Salib talked about the audition process for Moon Knight and detailed how the role came as a complete surprise. As is the case with pretty much everything Marvel, Salib didn’t know what character or project she was auditioning for, but she knew it was something big. Read what she had to say below:

“[The character] was a complete surprise. I knew I was auditioning for Marvel Studios and I knew it was for a lead — an Egyptian woman. They kind of gave me a fake name, and they had a dummy script. it was only once I was about to meet the director, and the casting team, they just mentioned, ‘By the way, you're going to be a CGI hippo.’ I was like ‘OK, sounds great, let's do it!’”

Tawaret-Balancing-Scales-In-Moon-Knight-Episode-5

Salib provides both the voice and motion capture for her surprise character. The star went on to talk about how Moon Knight director Mohamed Diab told her she did something funny with her knees in the auditions—which the costume department then incorporated into her costume by shortening her skirt so that she could fully embody Taweret. In addition to sporting some of Taweret’s actual costume, the actress had a giant pole attached to her back to emulate the hippo’s height in comparison to Isaac’s character (s) while filming.

On top of her MCU debut, Salib makes her television debut with Moon Knight. Despite the pressure of a high-profile Disney/Marvel Studios project, the 26-year-old actress described creating Taweret as “so much fun, it didn't feel like work." Her performance certainly added an element of levity to arguably one of the MCU’s most emotional hours thus far on Disney+. It seems Diab and company made a fantastic choice casting Salib as audiences can’t get enough of this exciting new MCU character, who is poised to play an important role in Moon Knight’s finale.

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Source: Marvel

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