Rachel Weisz on queer love stories, Dead Ringers and why she’s ‘honoured’ to be a lesbian icon

In a new adaptation of Cronenberg’s bloody classic Dead Ringers, British superstar Rachel Weisz pulls double duty as the infamous Mantle twins.

It doesn’t take long for things to get weird in Dead Ringers. Soon after we’re introduced to identical twin doctors Elliot and Beverly Mantle, we course through crude jokes about sisterly incest, excruciating deliveries, substance abuse, blood-splattered hospital floors, torturous screams and a close-up of a slimy embryo fished out from the toilet bowl, stroked lovingly in the palm of a hand.

That’s all in the first five minutes, by the way, which is a little sign that this show is not for the faint of heart – or stomach.

A gender-flipped reimagining of David Cronenberg’s cult 1988 thriller, Prime Video’s new six-episode series replaces Jeremy Irons’ yin-yang gynaecologists with two famed obstetricians, both played by the captivating Rachel Weisz.

At their Manhattan hospital, Beverly and Elliot deliver babies, swap places and seduce their unwitting patients. Beyond sharing drugs and sexual partners, though, the twins also harbour a dream of opening a cutting-edge birthing centre that will allow them to revolutionise maternal healthcare, even as they seek to push the ethical boundaries of medical science. 

While the era of the reboot is in full swing right now (box-office hits Grease and Fatal Attraction have also received the TV treatment recently) Dead Ringers is certainly a bold choice for an adaptation.

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