by Gill Pringle
The problem with one actor playing twins is…well they look alike and so it’s often hard to tell the difference.
But not so with Rachel Weisz, who goes all-in with her deliciously campy portrayal of twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle in her feminist reinterpretation of David Cronenberg’s body horror classic, Dead Ringers.
In this dark and twisty re-boot, there is no confusing the Mantle twins, as Weisz imbues Elliot with a sharp sense of humour and ferocious appetite – for sex and food alike – while Beverly is the more sensitive and perhaps naive of the duo.
Serving as an executive producer on the series, Weisz was strongly inspired by Jeremy Irons’ original portrayal of the Mantle twins in Cronenberg’s original 1988 horror thriller.
As a teenager, she had lapped up Irons’ portrayal of the sinister yet seductive Mantle twins, confessing to FilmInk today, “I was a huge fan of the original Cronenberg film. The first moment I saw it, I could never forget it. I would say, I’ve been obsessed with that film for most of my life, a huge fan.
“I was really into the psychosexual-thriller tone and Jeremy Irons was sensational. I was also obsessed with his co-star Genevieve Bujold’s performance. All the characters are damaged – very damaged. The movie is unforgettable,” she says.
Lingering with Weisz in the decades that followed, she toyed with the idea of telling a story for the screen centered on sisters. She even considered adapting various short stories and novels over the years, but none of them seemed right.
Then it dawned on her: What if she re-imagined Dead Ringers as a story about female twin OBGYNS [Obstetrician Gynaecologist]?
“I thought it’d be fascinating to see all the lead characters as women. It felt like an exciting idea for long-form storytelling in television, which I had never done before,” says Weisz, who teamed with Brit screenwriter Alice Birch to create a six-part series for Amazon’s Prime Video.
An award-winning playwright, screenwriter and writer on Succession and Normal People, Birch [pictured left with Weisz] was Weisz’s first choice to reimagine Dead Ringers as a female-centered limited series. “I’d seen her [2016] film, Lady MacBeth, which is a spectacular piece of writing,” Weisz recalls. “I’d also read her plays Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again and Anatomy of a Suicide. I could sense she was extremely bold and inventive.”
In this modern retelling of Cronenberg’s film, Weisz would play the double-lead role of twins who share everything: drugs, lovers, and an unapologetic desire to do whatever it takes – including pushing the boundaries on medical ethics – in an effort to challenge antiquated practices and bring women’s healthcare to the forefront.
“The twins are obsessed with each other. They have never spent a night apart for their whole life, which takes them to a dangerously co-dependent place. They’ve always lived in the same city and they’re both Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. They’re very brilliant in their field. Professionally, they’re at the top of their game,” explains Weisz.
Beyond the gender switch, the biggest challenge was depicting bodily functions in ways rarely seen on screen. Think: menstrual blood, miscarriage tissue and close-ups of birthing babies.
To get the details just right, Weisz and Birch consulted with OBGYNs, trauma and neurology specialists, embryologists and midwives.
Furthermore, they met with an expert scientist in the field of longevity studies. “He believes, or he wouldn’t even say he believes, that death will be like a curable disease one day. It’s something that he would say is completely preventable. But we just haven’t got there medically yet. So that was a pretty startling scientist and scientific theory to come across,” says Weisz, 53.
But the physicality and sensuousness of the performance was all Weisz, actually coming up with the idea of Elliot’s insatiable appetite all on her own, proposing to director Sean Durkin how Elliot would go “full animal” in a scene where she tried to figure out the identity of a person who had been in her home and what they had been eating.
“I was just like, ‘Oh, someone’s been there. What have they eaten?’ Elliot’s going to find out by eating their leftovers. ‘Whose knickers are these? Oh, I’m going to smell them,” the actress told Emmy magazine.
“And maybe, the smelling of the knickers led me to the dog part – like Elliot is part dog in the best possible way. She’s loyal. She lives on instinct. And she’ll eat beyond when she’s full,” Weisz said.
These twin roles represent the biggest challenge of Weisz’ acting life. “I have no question about that,” she says. “But also, the most joyous in many ways. It was hard work with a whole crew kind of moving as one organism, so it wasn’t just me. It was VFX motion control, hair, makeup, the set dressing and props. I mean, everybody was shifting from one character to the next and I didn’t shoot Beverly for one day and then Elliot for another day – it was within one scene, so we’d shoot one half and then shoot the other half.
“So, we were moving as a living unit on the set, which was thrilling. I mean, as exciting as maybe learning to walk a tightrope, which I definitely can’t do, but I learned – we all learned together,” said the actress whose eclectic body of work includes Black Widow, The Favourite, The Lobster and The Constant Gardener.
She delivers an erotic performance unlike any of her other roles. “They were both just so beautifully written. And so, so complicated, it’s hard to sum them up, but that would be the broad brushstrokes.
“What interested me is that level of intimacy – the idea of sharing everything. It’s a really intense story about these incredibly high-functioning siblings who are brilliant at their jobs, but massively dysfunctional in their private lives,” says the actress who is married to Daniel Craig.
Thanks to Birch’s script, Weisz found that everything was on the page – which was helpful for differentiating between each twin during rapid set-ups.
“There wasn’t time to actually take time between characters. I was very lucky because Alice’s writing is so psychologically layered and profound, that each character was completely distinct. There were just two totally separate people on the page before I even got into hair makeup, costume and the way in which they might look different. They were written on the page as totally distinct characters. So, I had Alice’s words to embody. And it’s really extraordinary writing,” she says.
“Beverly is altruistic, thoughtful, careful and kind. She has a complicated relationship to pleasure – and she really wants to change the way that all women birth, irrespective of their economic background, their wealth . . . and Elliot’s very, very different,” she teases.
“She loves Beverly, so she’ll go along with her dream to change the way that women birth, but she’s not altruistic. She is into science, and she wants to really change the world through scientific research and discovery and she’s pushing the boundaries of what’s ethical and what isn’t. And yeah, she’d like some prizes, I think.”
And surely Weisz and Birch – along with a cast which includes Jennifer Ehle, Britne Oldford and Poppy Liu – will be up for some prizes too.
“I hope it’s a pretty wild ride. It’s deliciously mischievous, emotional, moving – and it’s darkly humorous too,” she adds.
Dead Ringers is streaming now.
