Rachel Weisz & Alice Birch Interview: Dead Ringers

Rachel Weisz & Alice Birch Interview: Dead Ringers

In her first major television series, Rachel Weisz takes on not one, but two characters. Dead Ringers, a new show from Prime Video, adapts David Cronenberg’s 1988 film of the same name for the modern era, replacing Jeremy Irons’ twin male gynecologists with Weisz’s Beverly and Elliot. The pair are seeking funding for a cutting-edge fertility clinic that will give them total control over their research, but this kind of control could result in them pushing the boundaries of ethics in the medical field.

Alice Birch, who has worked on shows including Succession, Normal People, and Conversations with Friends, executive produces the new series. While Weisz takes on double-duty as the star of the show, the cast of Dead Ringers is full of heavy hitters like Jennifer Ehle, Emily Meade, Poppy Liu, Michael Chernus, and Britne Oldford.

Related: Why Dead Ringers Is The First (& Best) Cronenberg Movie To Become A TV Show

Ahead of the premiere of Dead Ringers, Screen Rant sat down with Weisz and Birch to discuss the show, including the experience of playing identical twins, whether the roles were confusing, and what Weisz would do if she found out she had a twin sister.

Rachel Weisz & Alice Birch on Dead Ringers

Rachel Weisz & Alice Birch Interview: Dead Ringers

Screen Rant: Rachel, since you’ve had a lot of time to think about it, I was curious: what is the first thing you’d do if you found out today you had an identical twin?

Rachel Weisz: Oh, I’d just go meet them and say hello, I think. Go for a walk.

Alice, I read that you had never seen Dead Ringers before signing on to the project. What was your initial reaction to the film and what was one of the biggest challenges of updating the Cronenberg movie for the modern day?

Alice Birch: I watched it before I signed on, I just hadn’t seen it. It came my way [and] I thought it was incredible. It’s properly, genuinely mind-blowing. I hadn’t seen anything like it. It’s such a strange, wild, very specific piece of cinema. And I loved it and felt excited and quite scared about the challenge of finding a new story to tell.

Rachel, the [switches] between Beverly and Elliot [are] crazy. Did you have a favorite twin to play on the show?

Rachel Weisz: I can’t choose between them. I love them both the same, and all their glorious fallibility and all their humaneness and all their professional brilliance. I couldn’t possibly choose. But I did love performing Elliot being Beverly or Beverly being Elliot. That was a juicy, juicy challenge.

It’s not in the script, but I imagine that they’ve been doing it since they were children. In school, if one of them was in trouble with a history teacher, and one was better at history, could you go be me for history or whatever? Because maybe there are different classes. So it’s something they’ve done their whole life. So for them, it’s like, second nature. But that was fun.

Did you ever find yourself getting confused a little bit by the twins?

Alice Birch: I mean, no, not really. I think they were so different when we were making them and talking about them. We knew that we wanted them to be very, very different, that the right twin showed up at the right moment on the page. Some things were harder to write than others. But no, they were so different.

About Dead Ringers

Rachel Weisz as twins in Dead Ringers, both looking identical except one wears her hair up, the other down

A modern take on David Cronenberg’s 1988 thriller starring Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers will feature Rachel Weisz playing the double-lead roles of Elliot and Beverly Mantle, twins who share everything: drugs, lovers, and an unapologetic desire to do whatever it takes—including pushing the boundaries of medical ethics—in an effort to challenge antiquated practices and bring women’s health care to the forefront.

The series’ ensemble cast includes Britne Oldford (The Umbrella Academy, American Horror Story: Asylum) as Genevieve, Poppy Liu (Hacks, Better Call Saul) as Greta, Michael Chernus (Severance, Orange is the New Black) as Tom, Jennifer Ehle (Zero Dark Thirty, Saint Maud) as Rebecca, and Emily Meade (The Deuce, The Leftovers) as Susan.

Check back soon for our other interviews with the cast of Dead Ringers:

  • Poppy Liu
  • Britne Oldford
  • Jennifer Ehle & Emily Meade

Dead Ringers premieres on Prime Video Friday, April 21.