May Calamawy, the Honey Moon Period

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May Calamawy attends the Moon Knight Los Angeles Special Launch Event at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Egyptian-Palestinian actress May El Calamawy has been working in the United States since 2015, where she found herself a role in Ramy as Dena Hassan. Now she has taken the next step up into the Marvel pantheon of heroines as Layla El-Faouly in Moon Knight, alongside Oscar Isaac.

She held her own as well, stealing the show with every scene she was in. Her goal was to bring an authenticity to her character, and she nailed it. “I specifically wanted to do that with women from the Middle East, because the way we’ve been raised and our mannerisms and our conditioning is so different.

I had to really sit with what does that look like, and how would someone from there react to a situation versus someone from somewhere else. Something I love about our women is that their strength is sometimes a little unassuming. It’s a very soft strength, but it’s really there.”