Moon Knight costume designer, Meghan Kasperlik, talks about every costume in the show including what Jake Lockley’s Moon Knight will look like
Meghan Kasperlik recently sat down with The Direct to talk about all things costume-related in the Disney Plus series Moon Knight. The six-part story has recently concluded, just this week, and went out with a massive tease in the post-credit scene.
SPOILER WARNING for Moon Knight Finale
Kasperlik was first asked if there was ever a specific costume drafter for Jake Lockley.
“No, there wasn’t another one for Jake. That was kept pretty hush-hush, Jake coming in at the end, so nobody had [that] little spoiler. But when he came everyone was really excited.”
In a follow-up, Meghan Kasperlik then said what she would do and where she would get started in relation to a Jake Lockley Moon Knight suit.
“I think that I would make it darker. I would make it probably the black one, the black costume that’s in the comics. I would definitely start there. This is nothing that they’ve ever done, this is just me. Those suits are so amazing, and you just never know. But there was nothing that was ever, ever done.”
She was then asked, given the large number of costume variants, how do you approach what you want to use in the final costume?
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“Just like any type of superhero thing, there’s lots of iterations of the same suit. Mohamed Diab is one of the directors, and he’s Egyptian. He really wanted to focus on the mummy aspect of it, and being really Egyptian. So it was more about incorporating the strength of the armor and also the mummy aspect. But I think it was a beautiful bridge because it brings in Khonshu from thousands of years ago to what we would probably think of today as being a very strong suit. So I think it was an amazing blend because there is that [part of] both worlds. Like you have kind of that old world, but you also have the new…”
Kasperlik talked about the Mr. Knight suit that Stephen Grant wore.
“When I came on, I was a little bit concerned about the three-piece suit because it can go so flat. So my team searched far and wide for a fabric that could give—that had a little texture to it. I love to put a lot of texture to any of the designs I do. So, there’s texture in it, and it’s actually an upholstery fabric because I knew that we would be outside with it, and the costume would be getting dirty and we would need to keep it clean and keep that freshness.”
“So between the texture in there, the upholstery fabric giving it a little extra help—there’s also a silver lemay that is woven into the fabric, so when the light hits it, it doesn’t just go flat. There’s a little luminescence that comes off of it, so that was really important. We kept that texture going in the waistcoat, and then there’s a texture on the tie and everything. So [along with] having a lot of texture on the mask it just really helps the character.”
Kasperlik then went on to talk about key design choices for each of the three gods who showed up while manifested in a physical form.
“I didn’t want anything to be perfect on that costume. He’s very old, he’s been around the block. It shouldn’t be super fresh. But also, all the costumes are functional. So the actor that was in the suit needed to be able to wear the suit [and] be able to move. I had an amazing team in Budapest where we filmed, and those amazing tailors hand sewed the entire costume because the actor was very slim and I wanted to very much accentuate a gauntness. So [they] hand-sewed and hand-stitched everything on stretch, and there’s about six different fabrics on there that were layered on top of one another to give that kind of mummy look.”
“So, this is one of the only costumes that has color in our show, and I was very suggestive in keeping the color. She was very light and happy, Taweret means like birth or mother in the Egyptian colors, so in her costume, I had an in-house metalsmith who was hammering in—like there’s a, almost like a symbol on the headpiece that’s about birthing, and there’s all the different hieroglyphs that are hand-hammered into the leather, and hand-painted. So I really wanted to bring in all those details, but also the skirt is colorful—she’s quirky and fun. We didn’t tarnish the gold, we wanted to make it—so that you could see everything, and there was a lot of excitement and life in her costume.”
“I wanted—there is an Egyptian dress that is [very famous] that’s like… hand-beaded, the whole thing. So I was pretty determined to make sure that sort of thing was in our show. But also that there had to be power and some interest to the costume, and it not just being pretty. So I really had a lot of images from vis-dev department and also the visual department, the VFX team, and that was a lot working together. And so underneath that hand-beaded dress—we hand-beaded that dress, I had an amazing person who in-house made that whole thing, and underneath there’s kinda like a really shimmery fabric. I’m always about the light bouncing off of the costume, and the costume [can help] the lighting. So there’s that, and then my metalsmith made this amazing cobra that looked pretty scary in real life, so I think that really helped. And then my friends in VFX really helped with the rest of it.”
