Dylan O’Brien says stepping into Twinless felt like living his childhood movie dreams.
“It Takes Two was one of my favorite movies ever as a kid. And so was Parent Trap,” O’Brien tells Gayety.
The award-winning dark comedy first premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Twinless stars O’Brien as Roman, a young man grappling with the loss of his identical twin and searching for his place in the world without him. While struggling to clear out his brother’s belongings and navigating tense battles with his mother, played by Lauren Graham, Roman meets Dennis, played by writer-director James Sweeney, at a support group for people who have lost their twin. The two become inseparable, but Dennis may be hiding more than he lets on.
“I guess as a filmmaker, I’m trying to balance writing the world as it is versus the world as I want to see it,” Sweeney says. “I think everybody’s flawed. We’re all human, and I see Dennis as being a deeply human person and definitely tracking how are we building empathy and understanding his character and why he makes the decisions he makes.”
Dylan O’Brien’s Double Duty
While Dennis is complicated in his own right, O’Brien also had the challenge of embodying a pair of twins who couldn’t be more different: Rocky, the confident gay twin, and Roman, his slightly lost straight brother. But instead of nerves, the actor said he felt right at home.
“I felt genuinely so comfortable in both of these skins because they were both colored with so many elements that I identify with myself and that resonate with me. From the first time I even read the script, I deeply connected to who these guys were.”
O’Brien leaned on Sweeney’s encouragement to push both Roman and Rocky as far as possible: “I also felt so trusting and comfortable in James’s hands, and then it’s just about getting there and having so much fun going for it, just letting it fly and having permission from him to be like, go take it even further. We could always bring it back. So yeah, I mean, it’s the best way to work.”
Even with all the intensity, O’Brien kept his sense of humor — especially about his on-screen look. “I can’t bring it up then. It’s a little try hard, so I’ve been waiting for people to bring it up,” he joked of his mustache and fitted jeans look. You’ll just have to watch to see what we’re talking about.
Lauren Graham on Returning as THE Mother
Lauren Graham admitted she doesn’t approach roles by thinking of herself as the default “mom,” even if audiences can’t help but see her that way.
“I always say yes, I have ended up in these moms, one of which has had more staying power than I could have foreseen. But I don’t go in thinking like Mom, I go in thinking, who’s this person and what’s this relationship?” she said.
What drew her to Twinless was the chance to play against type. “I was so pleased to get the chance to play somebody a little bit messier and in a darker place. But more than that, I just loved this movie from the minute I started reading it. And I am such a fan of Dylan’s and just thought, this is something I just want to be any part of at all.”
Graham added that the story doesn’t go where you expect: “It has almost a thriller kind of aspect to it, I feel, which is like, how is this going to resolve itself? This is a mess. And yet it’s a fun mess to watch.”
Nobody’s Perfect, Right?
For Aisling Franciosi, who plays Marcie, the film’s strength lies in its willingness to embrace contradictions.
“I don’t think we’re ever really at our most perfect. In a day sometimes we can run the gamut of being maybe not our best selves and then maybe coming back to something that we can be prouder of,” she said. “What I like about this film is that we see so many of these characters show all their different sides of them.”
It’s like Dennis says in the trailer, “You know how people say ‘just be yourself’? Like what version of me?”
The film is rich with queer storylines and characters, but Sweeney emphasized his hope that Twinless resonates universally. “Ultimately I just feel like there is universality and specificity, and I don’t think it matters if you’re gay or straight or whatever,” he said. “Hopefully this is a film you can enjoy because it’s ultimately about friendship and hopefully everybody has a friend.”
