Co-stars say Rachel Weisz gives master class in acting in ‘Dead Ringers’

“To watch Rachel work on one character and then transform into another was really extraordinary,” Ehle says. “It would change while we were filming. It was just so fascinating.”

Weisz plays Beverly and Elliot Mantle, twins who work in health care and share everything – from drugs to lovers – and want to push the boundaries of medical ethics.

Ehle plays a potential benefactor who can help make their medical dreams come true. “When Beverly says, ‘I want to have this center for women that’s accessible,’ my character is like, ‘Why does it have to be accessible? What’s the benefit in that?’ For her, the only benefit is money and that doesn’t translate.”

Poppy Liu, who plays an assistant to the Mantles, was particularly fascinated with the series’ medical themes. A practicing doula, Liu says “Dead Ringers” shows “how much the medical system fails us.” Too often, “it’s based off an industrial factory mentality where people are like products – you want them in and out as fast as possible. It’s based on efficiency. It’s based on cutting costs. What people actually need is a positive experience.”

Liu says she was mesmerized by a documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” that detailed just how mechanical childbirth could be. “Dead Ringers” leans into that concept and how the birthing experience differs based on race or class.

The Mantles are keen to streamline the process, an underlying theme that emerges when those potential benefactors sit around a dining room table.

There, co-star Emily Meade says, she and others got to see how Weisz played the two characters. “The scene took three days, but it was pretty entertaining and fascinating to watch. Rachel would go back and forth and we had so many chances to do it because we were doing it with two characters.”

Liu says Weisz would play one character opposite her double, then reverse and play the other. “Rachel will get from Beverly to Elliot and then come back again. The fact that they’re done with so much specificity and realness makes Rachel a genius. And then she gets to play them playing each other. It’s really fun,” Liu says.

While Jeremy Irons reveled in the characters’ creepier side (he played the Mantles in a David Cronenberg film), he didn’t have the same medical agenda as Weisz’s duo. That expands the series’ scope and gives actors like Ehle, Meade and Lui another aspect to play.

“It does a really good job of painting all the layers of (medicine) without being too preachy or melodramatic,” Meade says. “It gives you this tableau of what we’re working with.”

Ehle was taken with the way it talks about health care as a “profit center.” “It’s very interesting how the private sector can be involved in health care,” she says.

Liu says that concept is perfect for the re-envisioned look at the “Dead Ringers” story – “it’s so cool to have that as an undercurrent, a backdrop for this incredibly visually captivating, dark, moody, sexy story.”

She was also taken with Weisz’s ability to walk so many tightropes in one story. “When they’re pretending to be each other, it’s particularly fun,” Liu says.

And, if forced to make a choice, she says she likes Elliot better. “She’s more fun to hang out with.”

“Dead Ringers” begins April 21 on Prime Video.