You might be surprised to learn that Oscar Isaac turned down the opportunity to host Saturday Night Live in 2015, right at the height of his Star Wars popularity. But that’s not the most unexpected revelation from the monologue Isaac delivered when he finally did host on March 5.
About halfway into the too-brief opening bit, Isaac expressed his excitement for joining the Marvel universe — he stars in Moon Knight, which is coming to Disney+ on March 30 — before revealing that he was once an Avenger, too. Not a superhero, but a vengeance-seeking ninja.
Isaac “wrote, directed, and starred in” a movie called The Avenger that he shot with a neighbor friend at age 10. You know the kind of low-rent video project I’m talking about, right? Just kids goofing around and making stuff with whatever camera is on hand. That’s the caliber of cinema we’re talking about here.
The Moon Knight star came prepared. He spends the rest of the monologue sharing and contextualizing actual clips of his 10-year-old self training to be a fighter, stabbing a masked assailant (also played by Isaac) in the eye, and performatively licking his bloodied sword. Just excellent stuff.
It ends on a wonderfully positive note, too. Isaac raises a rhetorical question when the clips are done rolling: “Now you might be asking, Oscar, why did you use your monologue to show us these old home videos?” He has an answer at the ready: “It’s important to encourage kids to be weirdos,” he say, eliciting big cheers from the live audience. “Because every once in a while,” Isaac continues, “one of those weirdos grows up to host SNL.”