Oscar Isaac showing versatility with Broadway, Spider-Man roles
By Monica Rubalcava
Los Angeles, May 24 (EFE).- Guatemalan-born American actor Oscar Isaac is currently splitting his time between big-screen projects, including a voice role in the new animated film “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” and performances on stage, having recently made his Broadway debut.
Speaking of the theater, he said in an interview with Efe that it is a discipline he regards as “necessary” in his life as an artist.
“In the theater, you have to use every cell to express yourself. The artist uses everything he has, and that for me is necessary. It’s returning to where I began as an artist,” the graduate of New York City’s Juilliard School said.
Isaac, who had not set foot on stage since 2017, has been starring since late April on Broadway in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” a 1964 play written by Lorraine Hansberry.
He said performing in front of a live audience is an activity that takes him back to his days as a member of the ska-punk band The Blinking Underdogs.
“It’s quite similar. (With a band) you play the same songs every night but it always feels different depending on the audience,” Isaac said.
By contrast, Isaac serves as a voice actor in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” a computer-animated superhero film that is the sequel to the 2018 picture “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (in which he had a cameo during that film’s post-credits) and once again is set in a shared set of alternate universes.
In the movie, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson and scheduled to be released in the US on June 2, the Guatemalan actor plays the role of Miguel O’Hara, the darkest and most serious version of the superhero.
That character will face off against Miles Morales, who took over as his universe’s Spider-Man upon the death of Peter Parker, in a struggle to change the course of their destinies.
“Even though you only have your voice, there’s lots of scope for creating a character,” said Isaac, who previously worked as a voice actor in the 2022 animated film “The Addams Family 2” and has been part of a the cast of films in the Star Wars and X-Men franchises.
Although the 44-year-old US-based actor said it is exciting to be part of iconic pop culture projects, he said that when offered a role he focuses more on the character than the popularity of the franchise.
He said he was drawn to O’Hara because of the mystery surrounding that individual of Mexican and Irish heritage and the transformation he undergoes over the course of the film.
“When we see Miguel for the first time, he’s dark, serious and contained, but when the film ends he’s like an animal. He’s a bit like a vampire. It was very interesting to see how the character kept changing and losing control,” Isaac said.
He also said he was attracted to the diversity proposed by “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” a film that opens the door for a rebellious teenager of African-American and Puerto Rican descent, Miles Morales (played by Shameik Moore), to be Spider-Man.
“The first film tackled the question of ‘who has the right to be this character?’ That’s a question that’s even political, and the answer was that anyone could be Spider-Man. Now the question is, ‘what do you do when you have the mask on?'” EFE
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