Rachel Weisz and Alice Birch: ​‘Sib­lings can be close, but this is a whole oth­er lev­el of codependency’

Red hood­ed robes, gynae­co­log­i­cal gad­gets resem­bling tor­ture devices and a deep plunge into the bow­els of folie à deux – David Cronenberg’s 1988 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror Dead Ringers is firm­ly nest­ed in the cult col­lec­tive con­scious­ness, with the stylised tale of the Man­tle Twins a defin­ing work in the Cana­di­an director’s oeu­vre. Adapt­ing a film with such a strong sense of nar­ra­tive and style seems a riské choice, but one actress-turned-pro­duc­er Rachel Weisz and writer Alice Birch were will­ing to make. The duo steers the helm of the Ama­zon adap­ta­tion of Cronenberg’s clas­sic, the epony­mous six-episode series plac­ing Weisz into Jere­my Irons’ shoes to con­coct a gen­der-flipped retelling of the twist­ed rela­tion­ship between Elliot and Bev­er­ly Mantle.

LWLies: Rachel, you were the one to intro­duce Alice to Dead Ringers, which you have often described as one of your favourite films. Hav­ing come to it at dif­fer­ent times of your lives, can you both remem­ber what went through your mind upon that first watch?

Rachel Weisz: It’s a very twist­ed, very unusu­al rela­tion­ship. I have nev­er seen any­thing like it. Sib­lings can be close, but this is a whole oth­er lev­el of code­pen­den­cy, which I was slight­ly jeal­ous of at first. It seems great to have some­one to share your life with and to rely so much on, but then, of course, it gets very tox­ic and very, very dark. I think what drew me to the orig­i­nal film was the rela­tion­ship between the broth­ers and Geneviève Bujold’s per­for­mance as Claire. I think it’s a spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance from her, one I’ll nev­er for­get. It’s such a dam­aged char­ac­ter and I can feel the intel­li­gence behind the per­for­mance, she knows how dam­aged she is and the char­ac­ter knows her dam­age — she’s wear­ing it all on her sleeve. Still, she won’t be their vic­tim and she’s not a pas­sive char­ac­ter. It’s spectacular.

Alice Birch: I first watched the film imme­di­ate­ly think­ing of it as a poten­tial adap­ta­tion and think­ing: what would you take from it? I was quite calm. I real­ly remem­ber the red, the score, and this tone of dread all the time. It’s so high-wire. You sort of feel the film is bal­anc­ing so many things in it, if it push­es too far in one direc­tion, it is going to go some­where that is just so mas­ter­ful. All of those things were imme­di­ate­ly com­ing to me as exciting.

Both the film and the show are so great­ly defined by the idea of pres­ence, the thought of hav­ing some­one con­stant­ly present in your life, and the deep con­nec­tion that aris­es from the inten­si­ty of this pres­ence. Rachel, your per­for­mance, in a sense, is defined by absence — not hav­ing this oth­er ver­sion of your­self be there with you on set. How have you nav­i­gat­ed this dichotomy?

RW: It’s a very poet­ic notion. In the sto­ry, they are always togeth­er, inter­twined, inter­locked, and unsus­tain­ably close. But, in prac­ti­cal terms, I had an act­ing part­ner who played oppo­site me, so I wasn’t phys­i­cal­ly alone. She was Bev­er­ly then Elliot, and I was Elliot and Bev­er­ly, so I wasn’t ever lone­ly. There was nev­er an actu­al absence there.

There is also this Russ­ian doll-ish idea of the twins tak­ing each other’s iden­ti­ties, with you com­ing in to embody both of them. How has this res­onat­ed with you as an actor?

RW: In a sense, it’s some­body per­form­ing some­body per­form­ing some­body. I didn’t think about that while fil­ing because between action and cut I just believe that I am Bev­er­ly, so I didn’t have that extra lay­er. But, sit­ting back on it now out­side the film set, it’s such an inter­est­ing thing to think about, those layers.

AB: Yeah, it’s very inter­est­ing to think about some­thing that we’ve been work­ing on for such a long time through a new lan­guage. This is mak­ing me think about the idea of Genevieve [the char­ac­ter played by Britne Old­ford] also being an actor and the moment where the twins’ moth­er asks if she ever los­es her­self, which is just find­ing oth­er ways for those lay­ers to stack on top of each other.

RW: It is inter­est­ing how Elliot is so nasty at the actress and just comes for Genevieve when she is the least actress‑y – in that pejo­ra­tive way peo­ple use the term actress. Genevieve is just ground­ed, she absolute­ly knows who she is, and there is no con­fu­sion between her and the char­ac­ter she plays on her TV show. She’s incred­i­bly clear about who she is and who her char­ac­ters are, and it is love­ly to see an actress por­trayed in that way.

The gen­der rever­sal and hav­ing the Man­tle twins be obste­tri­cians instead of sole­ly focus­ing on fer­til­i­ty treat­ment allows for a con­nec­tion between sex­u­al­i­ty, plea­sure and repro­duc­tion. Cro­nen­berg is quite obvi­ous­ly famous for his rela­tion­ship with the body and I am won­der­ing how you trans­lat­ed this aware­ness of the phys­i­cal and metaphor­i­cal body here.

AB: The gen­der flip was always just a fact of the project because Rachel was play­ing both parts. They were just… Women. This gave us access to a slight­ly dif­fer­ent lens. We decid­ed real­ly ear­ly on they would be obste­tri­cians as well as gynae­col­o­gists because we were hun­gry for dif­fer­ent kinds of patients and them meet­ing dif­fer­ent women across all areas of fertility.

RW: When we decid­ed they would be obste­tri­cians as well, every day of their work­ing life saw two or three babies appear­ing from a woman’s body, either through vagi­nal birth or a C‑section, so, for me, get­ting into this sto­ry and this role was just very prac­ti­cal. This is what they did, this was their job. There is some­thing quite extra­or­di­nary about the female body, that life comes from, and I think we were both inter­est­ed in see­ing that. It’s not some­thing one has seen much.

When you talk about new life com­ing in, it brings me back to Cro­nen­berg and the idea of long live the new flesh. There is a crop of con­tem­po­rary female direc­tors employ­ing genre to explore this notion of the body, new flesh, new life. I’m think­ing Julia Ducor­nau, Lucile Hadži­halilović, Jen­nifer Kent, Ana Lily Amir­pour… I’m won­der­ing what oth­er foun­tains you drank from on top of Cronenberg’s.

AB: Par­tic­u­lar­ly look­ing back to the writer’s room and work­ing with all the incred­i­ble direc­tors we had and every­body bring­ing new ref­er­ences. Often a ref­er­ence that was there at the begin­ning would show up again. We talked about lots of artists and pho­tog­ra­phers like Heji Shin, who takes amaz­ing birth pho­tographs, and we talked a lot about abjec­tion and artists like Cindy Sher­man and Louise Bour­geois… There were a lot of foun­tains to go and drink from, just as much as Cronenberg.

RW: There were ref­er­ences to pho­tog­ra­phers and films and we just began to see a path togeth­er, the kind of area that we are visu­al­ly inter­est­ed in. Once I start­ed act­ing, I wasn’t think­ing of it in this way. Then, at the end of film­ing, it came back to help us with the edit­ing. There were just so many ref­er­ences… Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evo­lu­tion. I had nev­er seen the film before we start­ed research­ing and when I saw it I thought imme­di­ate­ly that it was a whole new visu­al lan­guage, gram­mar and sto­ry­telling. So we tuned in to some­thing visu­al together.

One of the promi­nent arcs with­in the film is Beverly’s addic­tion, some­thing that in your adap­ta­tion seems to be intro­duced through Jen­nifer Ehle’s char­ac­ter, Rebec­ca, the spear­head of a fic­tion­al Sack­ler fam­i­ly cul­pa­ble for the drug epi­dem­ic. I won­der how the char­ac­ter of Rebec­ca came to stand this par­tic­u­lar theme with­in the film.

AB: I hadn’t thought of it like that. It’s always so hard to remem­ber exact­ly where ideas come from. Often it’s some­body else’s imag­i­na­tion and peo­ple add lay­ers on all the time. We were real­ly inter­est­ed in the more phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal side of med­i­cine with­in the sys­tem and real­ly inter­est­ed in phil­an­thropy and the more com­pli­cat­ed pol­i­tics of that as well. But we were also try­ing to find the per­son who would be the most dif­fi­cult for Bev­er­ly to take the mon­ey from. We were feed­ing into the sto­ry engine and the dra­mat­ic stakes.