It’s been a big year for one actor playing multiple roles. Michael B. Jordan is both of the Smokestack twins in Sinners, Robert De Niro took on two mob bosses in The Alto Knights, and Blake Lively added a triplet to the mix in Another Simple Favor. Then there is Robert Pattinson playing all of the Mickey variations in Mickey 17. Later this year, Dylan O’Brien will be added to that roster when his Sundance Film Festival breakout Twinless hits theaters on Sept. 5.
In Twinless, O’Brien plays Roman, who joins a twin bereavement group when his brother Rocky (also played by O’Brien), dies unexpectedly. There, Roman meets Dennis, played by the film’s writer and director James Sweeney, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship.
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For O’Brien, playing twins was not an intimidating venture mostly because, while the whole film is centered on twins, he spends most of his time only playing one of them.
“So much of the way in for me was with the Roman character because the movie really centers around this friendship, and the ways into my deceased brother character was brief, truly,” he shares with Parade while he and Sweeney visit our studio during the Tribeca Festival. “We shot that stuff over two, three days, so I’m predominantly in [Roman’s] skin, but it was just always on the page. I really always did connect with the voices of both of these guys and James’s sense of humor through the texts.”
O’Brien’s twin performances are impressive, though, and have been drawing rave reviews since Sundance. Roman, the grieving, tense heterosexual with bottled-up emotions is markedly different from the swaggering, confident gay Rocky we see in flashbacks.
When O’Brien signed onto the film, his one request was that Twinless allow for a break in filming the two characters.
“In the weeks preceding production, we had talked a lot about scheduling,” he remembers. “We wanted to make sure that we were getting some kind of separation between the two parts. Just before the holiday, we shot one of the brothers, and then [we shot the other brother] after we had the holiday break, so I had about two-and-a-half, maybe three tops weeks between the guys. Today on an independent production, that’s such a luxury to get.”
“Credit to James,” O’Brien continues. “I had told him very early on that that separation was important to me to get as much distance between the characters and production as possible. He honored that and really fought for that in building the schedule.”
From there, he and Sweeney worked with their costume designer Erin Orr to build the twins. “I don’t know how we landed on the stache [for Rocky],” he laughs. “Things like that crack me up in hindsight.”
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While O’Brien may be the one playing twins, Twinless is very much the brainchild of Sweeney, who has been obsessed with twins since childhood, although neither O’Brien nor Sweeney have a twin in real life.
“When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about running into my long-lost twin in a forest or Hawaii,” Sweeney says. “I grew up with the zeitgeist of the Olsen twins, and Sister, Sister and The Parent Trap. I think it sort of represented the idealization of a best friend, like somebody who wants to do all the things you want to do and can read your mind.”
Sweeney wrote his first draft of Twinless in 2015, but didn’t get much traction on the script so shelved it to create his first film Straight Up, which premiered in 2019. Sweeney then pitched producer David Permut (using the Face/Off movie poster in his deck) in 2019, met O’Brien in 2020 and got the greenlight to film two weeks before the Writers Guild of America strike in 2023. While Sweeney was initially hesitant to take the role of Dennis, Permut and O’Brien eventually persuaded him.
For his sophomore film, Sweeney leveled up to a bigger budget, bigger cast and more locations. He nabbed Lauren Graham to play Rocky and Roman’s mom, with her shooting all her scenes in three days.
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“I’m just a huge fan. My casting director suggested it,” Sweeney remembers. “I was, at first, reticent because Gilmore Girls is such a reference in my first film, and I felt like it would be too meta, but I got over it.”
Twinless filmed in Portland in the winter, which required some extra work given that some of the outdoor scenes are set in the summer.
“Production design had these branches they would put in the dead winter trees to make it seem like spring,” O’Brien says.
“They all had to be individually permitted, which was a pain in the ass,” Sweeney adds.
Pretending it was spring also meant the cast had to wear summery clothes and refrain from exhaling so that you couldn’t see their breaths when they talked.
“We tried putting ice cubes in our mouth, because that’s like, allegedly, a thing, but it’s not. It wears off in like two seconds,” O’Brien says about a supposed trick to change your breath’s temperature.
“We did digitally remove one breath,” says Sweeney. “I can’t remember if it was mine or yours.”
Twinless is a twin-focused movie on every level. The soundtrack heavily features “Crazy for This Girl” by Evan and Jaron, who are identical twins, as well as a song by MOTHERMARY, another twin duo.
“Everybody we cast in the support group is a twin,” Sweeney says, “including the background talent.”
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If you’ve heard of Twinless outside of the festival buzz and twin lore, it might be because a GIF of one of the film’s sex scenes leaked and went viral on social media after Twinless premiered at Sundance.
“It sucks. It’s invasive,” says Sweeney. “On one hand, as a filmmaker, you want some sort of organic momentum that people become aware of the project, but that’s not how you want it to happen.”
“There is a lot to the movie that comes with a fresh eye,” O’Brien adds. “And so, obviously, that was something we tried to delete from existence, but also at the same time, excitement is being generated so we want that as well, and that’s a good sign hopefully.”
With Twinless hitting theaters in September, the film is making the festival circuit this summer, building up buzz with audiences whether or not they’ve seen the infamous GIF.
Looking back on filming, however, Sweeney is perhaps most impressed not with O’Brien’s ability to act as twins, but by his ability to act like he’s having fun playing chubby bunny.
“He hated that scene,” Sweeney says about a moment in the film when he and O’Brien cram marshmallows into their mouths.
“Hated it,” echoes O’Brien. “I have such a sensitive gag reflex. I get really phobic about having a lot of things in my mouth, so like the tears in my eyes are so real. I’m panicking.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Sweeney then muses. “I had the thought because it’s such a scene built on laughter, I’m like really laughing… But then I realized because you were having such a miserable time, ‘Oh, you’re really acting during this.'”
I’d like to see Michael B. Jordan, Robert De Niro or Robert Pattinson pretend to have fun during a miserable game of chubby bunny. That’s the true acting test.