Rachel Weisz says Dead Ringers was a “mindf*ck” about the movie
“The characters are complicated, and it’s not just good twin/evil twin — yawn, yawn — because people are very, very complicated.”
Rachel Weisz initially had trouble seeing Double.
The Oscar winner plays identical twins in Prime Video’s Dead Ringers, a reimagining of David Cronenberg’s 1988 body horror psychological thriller of the same name.
“It was a mindfuck on day one,” Weisz told Porter Magazine of playing both roles. “But in the end it became like breathing … I just imagined two people playing them.”
Weisz noted that she shot entire scenes as one character, acting opposite a proxy, and then repeating the same scene after morphing into the other twin. Weisz would wear an earpiece so she could hear her own lines and theoretically act alongside her.
“The idea of having these two women at the peak of their professional lives but their personal lives are so dysfunctional, so devious and so bizarre,” added the Constant Gardener actress. “This contrast – it doesn’t get any better than this.”
Weisz, who suggested “Dead Ringers” be adapted into a television series rather than a film remake, collaborated with showrunner Alice Birch (“Normal People,” “Succession”) over six weeks in the writers’ room in early 2020.
“It was a direct serial order [from Prime Video], which is a really big deal, and I was just learning as I went,” she said. “It has been a long journey for me. It wasn’t the same as offering a job after the script was written – Alice and I came up with the idea together and then she wrote an amazing script.”
Weisz added, “Alice and I were really interested in seeing women who are hugely successful and screwed up at the same time. The characters are complicated, and it’s not just good twin/evil twin – yawn, yawn – because people are very, very complicated. We are never just one thing.”
Speaking to Hollywood at large, Weisz said that “women who pursue pleasure” are underrepresented on screen.
“Female desire is really interesting, and I think we just can’t get enough of it,” Weisz said. “I’ve often found roles for women in the past very simplified and I think that’s changing, which is really good. What I’m looking for are complicated characters. It’s an interesting, complex writing.”
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https://www.indiewire.com/2023/04/rachel-weisz-dead-ringers-was-a-mindfuck-to-film-1234825661/ Rachel Weisz says Dead Ringers was a “mindf*ck” about the movie
