Sex, drugs and a hefty dose of twin turmoil are just what the doctor(s) ordered in Dead Ringers, Prime Video’s gender-swapped reimagining of David Cronenberg’s 1988 cult classic of the same name. Since first announced in 2020, the six-episode series has been one of the streamer’s most anticipated releases of the year, with the most recent trailer having genre fans chomping at the bit. Ahead of the series’ April 21 streaming debut, FANGORIA sat down with star and executive producer Rachel Weisz and writer/showrunner Alice Birch to talk influences, challenges and the importance of realistic obstetric presentation.
This interview contains minor spoilers for Dead Ringers.
Dead center as the heart and soul of the show are twin OBGYNs Elliot and Beverly Mantle, a modern and gender-swapped evolution of the medical malpractitioners first portrayed by Jeremy Irons. Weisz’s Mantles contains multitudes, with The Favourite actress imbuing each twin with their own separate needs, desires, vices and vulnerabilities in a pair of performances so fleshed out and nuanced it’s easy to forget that you’re watching one actor. It’s also a testament to the writing of Birch, who, with a filmography including Lady Macbeth, Normal People and 2022’s The Wonder, is well-versed in bringing complex women to life on both stage and screen.
Weisz has stated in other interviews that she cannot choose a favorite Mantle, loving each of the “equally fucked-up” twins as much as the other. But in a show where both Elliot and Beverly are put through the emotional wringer (excuse the pun), surely one of the twins proved more of a challenge, both in a performance and writing capacity?
Alice Birch: From a writing point of view, they both had difficult moments. Whenever Elliot is not having a good time – for example, when she’s watching her sister fall in love with Genevieve (The Umbrella Academy’s Britne Oldford) and not be so present. That was hard to write. On the opposite side, Beverly having a good time, finding pleasure and falling in love…that was a little bit harder to access.
Rachel Weisz: It’s interesting to hear Alice say that because those are the moments that were also the hardest to act. I think through the writing, I felt Alice’s discomfort there. When Beverly is falling for Genevieve, she just so deeply wants to make it all happen, but she struggles. She’s not an expert at letting go and drowning in that delicious intimacy and love. We were talking about Episode 3 the other day, when Beverly goes upstate for a romantic weekend with Genevieve – and Elliot, being without her twin, starts to have a really shit time. There’s a particular moment with the character Agnes (Susan Blommaert) when Alice and director Karena Evans came to me and had to remind me that Elliot is really not having a lot of fun right now. I kept saying [gestures flippantly] ‘no, no, she’s fine’… I was actually resisting it.
Dead Ringers might be based on Cronenberg’s psychosexual thriller, but the show stands firmly as its own separate entity, adjusting and evolving certain themes to better suit a female-led story. However, needless to say, there are loving nods and references to the auteur’s original, from the use of the iconic red scrubs to a soundtrack generously smothered in certified ’80s bangers. Were there any other inspirations, Cronenbergian or not, that the team looked to when creating the show?
AB: We had a lot of references, especially directorial ones. Each different director bought their own set of references to their episode. We also had a lot of Cronenberg fans working on the show, and we talked a lot about his work…
RW: And of course, Genevieve in the show is an actress shooting a television show called Rabid, which is obviously based on another Cronenberg film, so that was another inspiration. Julia Ducournau’s Raw was also an inspiration, as was Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution, the sci-fi film about women and bodies and the ocean. That was quite vivid to us.
Taking inspiration from two female-directed genre films feels fitting for a series that boasts an all-women screenwriting team. It’s both refreshing and – for women watching – obvious, as themes of women’s healthcare are explored throughout the series in ways that an all-male writer’s room perhaps wouldn’t be able to authentically access. Was a female-centric writer’s room an intentional decision from the series’ inception?
AB: It wasn’t conscious at the beginning – we approached the people who we were most excited by. All of the writers have a background in theater which is my background too, so that was really important, but they were also just the best writers for the job. In the writer’s room, everybody shared and gave a lot, which was very moving. It was also a big imaginative exercise as well, and I’m sure it would have been very different if there had been all men in the room. But it was a really joyful experience all around.
In a mainstream media landscape that so often adheres to – and reinforces – taboos in depictions of childbirth and pregnancy, Dead Ringers is refreshing in its refusal to flinch away from topics such as infertility, miscarriage, surrogacy and abortion. From the first episode, which features a graphic montage of births (supervised on set by medical professionals and experts for accuracy), Dead Ringers is dedicated to presenting a very real, sometimes very terrifying, portrayal of maternity that remains sincere even when the show leans into its wilder moments. For Birch (who has stated she wanted the show to reflect the ‘horror of the medical system that many women and birth-givers find themselves in’), this authenticity was essential:
AB: I was really interested in that as a creative exercise: we knew that we wanted the show to start in a very grounded, familiar place because we knew that we wanted to take it to a much more heightened, operatic place by the end. I haven’t seen childbirth depicted on screen, as you said, in a way that’s not really sanitized. So it was important that we start with that, a place that is really familiar.
With all this gender-swapping in mind, are there any other horror movies the pair have dreamt of seeing with a woman in place of a man, or vice versa?
AB: Ooh, good question… [long pause] But all the ones I’m thinking of already have a great female performance at the center!
RW: The Shining just came to my mind. Would you call that a horror?
AB: Oh, yeah absolutely.
RW: But maybe that should just be left as an idea. [laughing]
All six episodes of Dead Ringers will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on April 21.
