Rachel Weisz had trouble seeing double at first. The Academy Award winner stars as identical twins in the Prime Video series “Dead Ringers,” which is based on David Cronenberg’s 1988 body horror mental thriller of the same name.
“Day one was a mindfuck,” Weisz said of portraying both parts in Porter magazine. “But at the end, it was just like breathing…”I just envisioned two people playing them.”
Weisz revealed that she would film complete scenes as one character, opposite a stand-in, and then recreate the same scene as the other twin. Weisz would put on an earphone to hear her individual lines and, in theory, play alongside herself.
Rachel Weisz Plays A Double Role
The actor from “Constant Gardener” went on to say that it was “so dysfunctional, so erroneous and so bizarre” to have these two ladies at the top of their professions, yet their personal lives were so chaotic. “It doesn’t get any better than that contrast.” Weisz, who recommended adopting “Dead Ringers” into a TV series rather than a film remake, worked in the writers’ room with showrunner Alice Birch (“Normal People,” “Succession”) for six weeks in early 2020 confinement.
“It was a straight-to-series order [from Prime Video], which is a huge deal, and I was just winging it,” she explained.
“It’s been a long road for me.” It wasn’t the same as being offered a job with the script already written – Alice and I came up with the idea together, and she wrote an excellent script.”
Rachel Weisz said, “Alice and I were quite interested in watching women achieve enormous success and, equally, make mistakes. The characters are intricate, and it’s not as simple as “good twin/evil twin” – yawn, yawn – because individuals are really complex. “We are never one thing.” Weisz stated that “women pursuing pleasure” onscreen are underrepresented in Hollywood.
