Seeing double of Rachel Weisz in TV remake of 1988 cult film Dead Ringers

NEW YORK – Viewers will get a double serving of Oscar winner Rachel Weisz in the six-episode miniseries Dead Ringers.

Premiering on Prime Video on Friday, it is a remake of Canadian director David Cronenberg’s unsettling 1988 film of the same name, a psychological thriller starring Jeremy Irons as identical twin brothers who work together as gynaecologists treating fertility issues.

But the new series is a gender-swopped version revolving around identical twin sisters, with Weisz playing both roles.

And as in the original, the siblings have an uncannily close, co-dependent relationship – sharing not just professional interests, but also recreational drugs and lovers.

It was Weisz, 52, who came up with the idea of doing a female-centred rendition of the film – which was based on the best-selling 1971 novel Twins – and brought the concept to Prime Video.

Twins was loosely inspired by the strange lives and deaths of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, identical twin gynaecologists who, at age 45, were found dead in their Manhattan apartment in 1975.

“I’m a big fan of the original Cronenberg film,” the English actress says at the New York premiere of Dead Ringers, which she also executive-produces.

“Two siblings who are co-dependent and obsessed with each other, and who can’t be without each other for a second. I think that’s rich terrain for drama.

“I love that kind of dark, twisted, psychosexual thriller,” says Weisz, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the dramatic thriller The Constant Gardener (2005) and starred in The Mummy action-adventure franchise (1999 to 2001).

But why remake the cult film at all?

“It’s a simple answer. I wanted to be in a story where I’d get to play sisters and I remembered this story. It’s just so I could play the roles,” she says.

And there was plenty to sink her teeth into with these characters, who are named Elliot and Beverly Mantle – just as in the movie.

They are both obstetrician-gynaecologists “at the top of their game” and “kind of geniuses”, says Weisz.

“Elliot is more interested in science and pushing the boundaries of medical ethics and Beverly wants to open a birthing centre.

“And they’re co-dependent in a really twisted way. It’s like a psychosexual thriller with some dark humour.”

But it was “not such a challenge” portraying them both “when you have very good writing, and (writer-producer) Alice Birch wrote two completely distinct, brilliant characters”.

“On the page, they’re just completely different. Elliot’s kind of wild, full of appetite and ethically a little bit dubious, and Beverly’s a do-gooder and very serious.

“They were so psychologically layered,” Weisz adds. “They were so human because they were so flawed. They had such idealistic dreams in their professional lives, but they were dysfunctional and aberrant in their private lives.

“It was just a kind of feast on the page, to then go shut my office door and learn the lines and become them.”

Scenes involving both sisters would take longer to shoot and, while there was a learning curve there, the difficulties were mostly technical.

“Because you have to shoot one side of the screen and then you change and shoot the other side of the screen. It’s technically challenging,” says Weisz.

“I would often play Elliot first because she sets the pace of scenes. She talks a bit faster because she’s two minutes older, so she thinks she’s the boss. And then we would shoot Beverly.”

Weisz loves each of the characters equally, however, and says “she couldn’t possibly choose” a favourite.

The same goes for her husband, James Bond star and English actor Daniel Craig, 55, with whom she has a four-year-old daughter.

“I know my husband loves them, but I don’t know if he has a favourite,” says Weisz, who also has a 16-year-old son with her former partner, American director Darren Aronofsky, 54.

And she has no clue what Irons, the 74-year-old English actor who played the Mantles in the original, thinks of the new series.

“I haven’t spoken to Jeremy Irons. Very nervous to see what he makes of it,” she says.