<\/p>\n
Twinless is not only the most well-reviewed movie of Dylan O\u2019Brien\u2019s career; it\u2019s also his finest outing as an actor.<\/p>\n
Written and directed by James Sweeney, the dark dramedy centers on O\u2019Brien\u2019s identical twin characters, Roman and Rocky. The former ends up meeting Sweeney\u2019s Dennis at a support group for twins who\u2019ve lost their fellow twin, and they strike up a fast friendship to help each other cope with their own respective losses. The movie then takes a turn structurally and narratively to show the twisty final days of Rocky\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Twinless began its decorated run at Sundance earlier this year, as O\u2019Brien and his performance took home the dramatic special jury award. Sweeney\u2019s film also received the dramatic audience award. Considering that the two collaborators endured mass rejection before eventually getting Twinless made, the exceedingly warm reception on and off the festival circuit means so much more.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in the safe-decision era. If something is financially bankable and predictable in terms of an IP, then that\u2019s way more likely to get a green light than something like Twinless where you can\u2019t say for sure if an audience is going to go along for the ride,\u201d O\u2019Brien tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Twinless\u2019 current theatrical release. \u201cSo I\u2019m really proud that it\u2019s gotten the response that it has so far, which is the antithesis of the response that it was getting when we were taking it out as a script.\u201d<\/p>\n Twinless was financed by TPC and produced by Permut Presentations, in conjunction with Republic Pictures. The latter handled the post-Sundance sales to Roadside Attractions and Sony Pictures Releasing for U.S. and international distribution, respectively.<\/p>\n O\u2019Brien returns to the big screen next month in Jan Komasa\u2019s star-studded thriller, Anniversary. He\u2019ll then return once more at the top of 2026 in Sam Raimi\u2019s highly anticipated Send Help. Co-starring Rachel McAdams, the tonal mashup chronicles two incompatible work colleagues who crash land on a deserted island and have to find a way to work together for the sake of survival. The buzz around the film so far has been very strong.<\/p>\n \u201cI spoke to Sam a couple of weeks ago, and he said something very funny and very Sam about it,\u201d O\u2019Brien recalls. \u201cHe was like, \u2018I love the movie. It\u2019s weird. It\u2019s wacky. I think a lot of people might love it too. I also think some might not.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Well, that\u2019s great.\u2019 To me, we\u2019ve succeeded if that\u2019s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n Below, during a recent conversation with THR, O\u2019Brien also discusses his showstopping monologue in Twinless, as well as the benefits of shooting the Rocky character first.<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n You told me recently that you and James Sweeney faced years\u2019 worth of rejection and that the entire town <\/strong>passed<\/strong><\/a> on making Twinless.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Correct.<\/p>\n What were they afraid of for the most part?<\/strong><\/p>\n A large part of it was the flaws of these characters, and whether or not their actions and decisions would be deemed forgivable. In terms of investment, a lot of people in this industry are operating from a place of fear and a place of, \u201cIs this going to turn an audience off?\u201d So that\u2019s why we see a lot of these safe decisions being made. We\u2019re in the safe-decision era. If something is financially bankable and predictable in terms of an IP, then that\u2019s way more likely to get a green light than something like Twinless where you can\u2019t say for sure if an audience is going to go along for the ride and forgive these characters.<\/p>\n But that was so much of what I loved about the script initially, and I\u2019m so thankful that we got to make it without having to compromise on any of those things. Through the reaction to the film so far, we get to show people that you can trust an audience a little more than these financiers or executives might think.<\/p>\n People really respond to these human themes that we grapple with in this story, and it affords them a really deep empathy for these characters. At the end of the day, we really constructed an intimate and personal-feeling piece. So I\u2019m really proud that it\u2019s gotten the response that it has so far, which is the antithesis of the response that it was getting when we were taking it out as a script.<\/p>\n You were never asked to take anything out in order to appease anyone?<\/strong><\/p>\n Nope. We got to make exactly what we wanted to make.<\/p>\n I know your influence helped get it made, but was there another unsung hero who pushed it over the edge?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n [Producer] David Permut has to be mentioned. David met James the year before I did and said, \u201cI want to produce your next movie.\u201d He saw James\u2019s first film, Straight Up, just as I did, and anybody who watches that film sees the makings of a really brilliant filmmaker. David is an old-school producer who watches three-to-four movies a day. He does the work and follows his taste, not just the market or the business. So David was huge, and [EP] Miky Lee as well.<\/p>\n Is David the one who connected you with Sian Heder and her follow-up to <\/strong>Coda<\/strong>, <\/strong>Being Heumann<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jason Reitman had something to do with it as well. So I\u2019m not really sure who got to it first, but David definitely threw my name in there and got a good word in.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a fraternal twin, and there are dynamics between your identical twin characters, Roman and Rocky, that definitely hit close to home. Have you received some interesting feedback from other twins who\u2019ve seen the movie?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve certainly heard from some twins, or at least one of the twins, at Q&As and things like that. There was this guy at Sundance who was the last hit before going into the premiere, and he was like, \u201cThis movie is my nightmare.\u201d He\u2019s exceptionally close with his twin. They\u2019re tied at the hip. So how this movie is received by real-life twins is the thing we care about most. It\u2019s obviously such a unique experience on this earth, and we just hope that we honored that existence and that relationship. Hopefully, it gets the stamp of approval from the people who are truly living that experience and actually know what that relationship feels like and understand what that loss or no relationship could feel like, potentially.<\/p>\n You have the monologue of your career while sitting on a bed in a hotel room opposite James. Roman is talking to Dennis (Sweeney) as if he\u2019s Rocky, and he\u2019s saying everything he regrets not saying to Rocky when he was alive. What was the play-by-play on the day?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was really quite simple. James showed me the shot, and we always wanted to execute it in one long take, so I didn\u2019t have to conserve energy or emotion. It\u2019s not like we had to account for different setups, and so James\u2019 precision as a filmmaker really came in handy. I knew that this was the setup we were going to live in, and there was never going to be any second guessing about it being the one and only setup. That goes a long way.<\/p>\n But there wasn\u2019t much conversation about it. I knew what to ask for and what I needed in terms of the space. It was quite a tight-knit room anyway. There was a pretty intimate skeleton crew. So the blocking was simple, and I think I said the words once as we rehearsed the speed of the camera move, but I didn\u2019t do it in full performance. And I believe the first take is in the movie.<\/p>\n How many takes did you ultimately do?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think we did three takes total, but the first one is the one that made it into the movie. I\u2019m just so grateful that I got to do something like this once in my career and have it be supported so well. It just means so much to do something in the film medium that was so all about the performance. We\u2019re never cutting into it or looking away. It\u2019s so raw, and it was designed to be that way. It\u2019s such a beautiful piece of writing, and I really didn\u2019t want to change a word of it. So it was the first time that my preparation was solely about hitting it verbatim, and I never gave it a full rehearsal.<\/p>\n There\u2019s so many ways that we all approach acting, and I\u2019ve always been somebody who feels better when it\u2019s more fresh. You, as the actor, are always going to feel a little better about something when it\u2019s in the rawer stages. But so much of this job a lot of the time is somehow preserving that throughout however many setups and however many hours you\u2019re going to be doing it for. So this was one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments, and I was so grateful to be able to save all of my energy and emotion for this one space. I got to live it and breathe it in a really condensed amount of time.<\/p>\n I\u2019m guessing the movie scheduled itself around your mustache for Rocky and the removal of said mustache for Roman. If facial hair wasn\u2019t an obstacle, would you have preferred to shoot Roman first so that Rocky felt distant throughout your time as Roman?<\/strong><\/p>\n The mustache wasn\u2019t the reason that we shot it in that order, but it was a bonus because we were shooting it in that order. (Laughs.) We were either going to start with Roman and tack on Rocky at the end, or we were going to start with Rocky and then do the rest of production. The details are escaping me now, but I know that we were waiting on the SAG strike to lift at the time. That timing was going to dictate who we started with, but I was fine with either as long as they were separated.<\/p>\n I was fine to clear the Rocky stuff first, and then have the two-to-three-week holiday break before committing to Roman\u2019s headspace. If anything, it helped to first establish that sequence with Rocky. The under-the-bedsheet scene is such a linchpin scene in the film, and so much of the emotional through-line relies on that scene working.<\/p>\n In such a short amount of time, we really needed to feel how much love existed between these twin brothers and how unresolved things were when Rocky was lost. So I was so grateful that I was able to play the final diner scene\u2019s emotional payoff as Roman, having already achieved Rocky\u2019s under-the-covers scene.<\/p>\n Your casting director probably hired the entire identical twin population in Portland, and so it was only fitting that a pair of identical twins named Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen also appear on a TV screen. Do you know how that deal went down?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I should know the details, but we somehow got the clearance because the footage is in the film. It Takes Two was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Same with James. It\u2019s another one of those specific connections that harks back to lonelier times in childhood. Movies like that become so wholly representative of [millennial childhood]. Someone pointed out recently that Twinless is a millennial fest, and it was the first time we ever really realized it.<\/p>\n We spoke recently about Sam Raimi\u2019s <\/strong>Send Help<\/strong>, and you were very curious how it was going to land, tonally. Well, the test screening whisper network has said glowing things about it so far. Have you only seen ADR scenes at this point?<\/strong><\/p>\n I haven\u2019t even done ADR yet, but I just got an email about it last week. So I haven\u2019t seen anything yet, but I think Rachel [McAdams] was going to try to check it out soon. I spoke to Sam a couple of weeks ago, and he was like, \u201cI\u2019ll show you anytime.\u201d But I was like, \u201cI\u2019m so fine with seeing it once it\u2019s all tied up in a bow.\u201d He said something very funny and very Sam about it. He was like, \u201cI love the movie. It\u2019s weird. It\u2019s wacky. I think a lot of people might love it too. I also think some might not.\u201d (O\u2019Brien cracks himself up doing his best Sam Raimi impression.) And I was like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s great.\u201d To me, we\u2019ve succeeded if that\u2019s the case. So I\u2019m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n Sam produced a movie for a directing team I spoke to last year, and they told me a hilarious story about how he stood up in the middle of a producers\u2019 screening and started shadowboxing during a fight scene.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n (Laughs.) That\u2019s really funny, and it doesn\u2019t surprise me at all. He really goes for it in terms of commitment to bits, especially in front of an audience. He very much likes to perform for the crew, and he\u2019ll come in with something that he prepped just to make the crew laugh. So he\u2019s just an exceptionally funny human being, and that story doesn\u2019t surprise me.<\/p>\n I remain impressed with the shadowboxing that you did in David Stassen\u2019s <\/strong>Maximum Truth<\/strong>. Have you done lots of speed bag work over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve done almost zero speed bag work in my entire life, and I remember being really sore after we did that on Max Truth. We just all of a sudden thought that it was really funny. It was so ridiculous, and it just encapsulated the character\u2019s idea of what\u2019s cool. He was so wholly committed to it, and not even for a second did he think that it was going to make him look like an idiot.<\/p>\n I just saw the <\/strong>trailer<\/strong><\/a> for your 12th movie with Zoey Deutch. I believe you were shooting Anniversary when the strike happened, and you guys eventually received an interim agreement to continue. How would you sum up that experience? (Note: It\u2019s actually their third movie together in the last three years, but who\u2019s counting?)<\/strong><\/p>\n (Laughs.) Well, first of all, any 12th movie that\u2019s with Zoey is a pleasure. I can\u2019t wait to see what it is. That one was a wacky swing, for sure. It\u2019s been a while, and while I haven\u2019t really connected with a lot of these guys in a bit, I remember us all having a really great energy making that film. Jan [Komasa] is a really interesting cat and filmmaker, so I\u2019m curious to see that one.<\/p>\n I recently covered a cool New York thriller called Relay, and Thunder Road, the production company behind it, thanked New York Mets All-Star first baseman <\/strong>Pete Alonso<\/strong><\/a> in the credits. They\u2019ve actually thanked him on several of their recent movies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n What!? [Note: O\u2019Brien is a devout Mets fan.]<\/p>\n I know that he just <\/strong>hosted<\/strong><\/a> a movie night\/fundraiser at Citi Field, so he\u2019s clearly got an interest in movies. But do you know if he\u2019s quietly helping finance movies or anything like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n I have no idea, but that is wild. I\u2019ve gotta dive into this now. I\u2019ve got some connects. I\u2019m going to throw a text out, and if I get any intel, I will reach out to you. I\u2019m so curious about this. Thank you for telling me.<\/p>\n *** Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Twinless is now playing in movie theaters.<\/p>\n