SPOILERS: This post contains details about Twinless
Following its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year, James Sweeney is ready for audiences to see more than his Twinless sex scene.
Ahead of the dark comedy’s premiere in theaters on Friday, the movie’s writer, director and star told Deadline that the film’s leaked sex scene was “not the way I want to be introduced” after the film was pulled from the film festival’s streaming site due to piracy.
“Over the festival circuit, I would run into some people who’d be like, ‘Oh my God, Twinless, I saw your trailer.’ I’m like, ‘The trailer is not done. I know what you saw, that wasn’t the trailer,’” said Sweeney. “So, you know, I’m trying to keep a good sense of humor about it. All I can say is those pervs better show up and pay money to see it in theaters.”
Winning Sundance’s Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic, Twinless stars Sweeney as Dennis, a gay man who meets Roman (Dylan O’Brien) at a twin bereavement support group. Although their reasons for being there ultimately differ, a bizarre lie leads to a real connection between the pair.
“I mean, it’s interesting cause the loss of a twin is such a specific and profound grief, but grief is universal generally, so I think what I intended to achieve was create something that felt both specific and authentic to twin experience, being not a twin myself, of course,” explained Sweeney. “But also something that people who aren’t twins can tap into and and empathize with and understand. I see grief as doesn’t happen in a straight linear line. It weaves and surprises you, and I think I tried to capture the multiplicity of grief in the same way that I think this film traverses different tones, and I guess that’s how I experience life. It’s not just one note, it’s all genres.”
Marking Sweeney’s sophomore feature after Straight Up (2019), Twinless also stars Lauren Graham, Aisling Franciosi, Chris Perfetti and François Arnaud.
Read on about James Sweeney’s sophomore feature Twinless.
DEADLINE: How have things been going since premiering the movie at Sundance and touring around to all these film festivals?
James Sweeney: It’s been highs and lows. I’ve got so much travel this year. I normally don’t get sick very often, but I’ve gotten sick 3 times while traveling, including food poisoning that led to me fracturing my rib. And then, the different process, it’s always challenging and especially getting the trailer and the marketing materials to a place that we’re happy with it, but we just gotta trust the process, and we’re just happy to be getting the film out there and really excited for it to be in theaters.
DEADLINE: Yeah, me too, all my friends who’ve seen it as well have been texting me about it. They love it.
Sweeney: Oh great, yeah.
DEADLINE: So tell me about what made you want to follow up Straight Up with this movie.
Sweeney: I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a strategic master plan, where I ordained Twinless as my follow-up feature. It was really just meeting my producer David Permut off the heels of our Outfest LA premiere, where he wanted to know what else I had. I pitched him the logline for Twinless as I’m sitting behind the poster, and he read it immediately and sparked to it and gave me the hard sell about making it his next picture. And obviously, that was in 2019. It took a few more years than maybe we would have liked. A couple things happened such as the pandemic, and then we got greenlit two weeks before the WGA strikes, so there were certainly many hurdles along the journey, but I guess in terms of realizing that it would be the follow up to Straight Up, I guess it did sort of inform some of my stylistic or visual choices, knowing that maybe there might, for people who were familiar with my first film, might have some expectations and trying to acknowledge, but also not be confined by that, if that makes sense.
Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney in ‘Twinless’
Greg Cotten/Courtesy Sundance Institute
DEADLINE: What would you say you’ve learned, or has it gotten easier pulling triple duty as writer, director and star, wearing all these hats?
Sweeney: The most challenging hat that I wear is actually the fourth less spoken hat, is producing, cause it’s not just the title, I’m really a producer on the movie. And because it’s just David and I, and then on my first film, it was just Ross [Putman] and I, but I was the only one on the set, so literally it’s me signing contracts, negotiating vendors, dealing with all the minutia from credit delivery to deliverables. I’m overseeing all of that, but when it came to this film, because it was a larger scale obviously than Straight Up, but the loan is literally in my name, so I have that added pressure to deliver on time and on budget. So, that often can feel like it’s at war with what you’re advocating for creatively, so I think that was the most difficult thing to balance. And there were definitely times where it became overwhelming, but thankfully I had a really wonderful team to champion me and hold my hand throughout the process.
DEADLINE: Tell me a little bit about exploring loss and grieving and just mental health in general through this script.
Sweeney: I mean, it’s interesting cause the loss of a twin is such a specific and profound grief, but grief is universal generally, so I think what I intended to achieve was create something that felt both specific and authentic to twin experience, being not a twin myself, of course. But also something that people who aren’t twins can tap into and and empathize with and understand, I see grief as doesn’t happen in a straight linear line. It weaves and surprises you, and I think I tried to capture the multiplicity of grief in the same way that I think this film traverses different tones, and I guess that’s how I experience life. It’s not just one note, it’s all genres.
DEADLINE: Speaking of switching those tones, I really appreciated how you balance the comedy with the pain and the drama and all that. Was that easy to like convey from the page to the screen?
Sweeney: Yeah, I think so. I think it starts with the team and who you—I mean, casting Dylan was really the foundation of that, someone who we have shared taste and creative instincts, but specifically him as a performer, I think he possesses so much versatility, both dramatically and comedically, that that really gave me the canvas to play and paint with different colors. And I think that kind of works with all my heads of department and the entire cast, because it’s there on the page in my head. How it reads for other people, you’d have to ask them, but I think my job as director is to try to communicate how I see the film, how I see the tone, and it’s definitely not a clear cut. It was a risky move, and I think we were aware of that, and we tried to give ourselves the permission, but also the flexibility, whether that’s doing some scenes, leaning a little bit more into screwball energy, or leaning more into naturalism. I think we kind of try to walk that tightrope carefully, and then you find it again in the edit and you fine tune it, and eventually you have to walk away.
Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney in ‘Twinless’ (2025)
Roadside Attractions/Courtesy Everett Collection
DEADLINE: Tell me about teaching Dylan to play gay or to differentiate between Rocky and Roman.
Sweeney: I remember when we were at Sundance, he and I were talking about what we did or didn’t want to share ahead of the world premiere, and then I forget which outlet it was, where he talks about his his process with Rocky, and I was like, oops, we already let the cat out of the bag. It’s challenging for people who haven’t seen the film cause I don’t want to oversell Rocky as a character because it’s just a small flashback, even though I do think that, of course, has major implications for the film, and I think his performance is a huge feat. I think we had conversations from our very first Zoom meeting back in 2020 about how we saw the twins and how they were similar and how they were different and where their paths sort of diverged in their formative years. I think in terms of developing Rocky’s physicality and voice and his identity, I think it was giving him permission too. There can be a reticence, I think, for some straight actors to play femininity in any way because it can feel like reinforcing negative stereotypes we don’t want to see. I guess I felt specifically for Rocky, he would have comfortability with both masculine and feminine parts of himself, and I think he’s somebody who, in terms of presentation, was much more similar to Roman in their childhood but then kind of came into his own as a teenager, and then obviously an adult.
DEADLINE: It’s very well-rounded the way he plays it.
Sweeney: Yeah, I’ll say the the first time we ran through some of those scenes versus where we ended up there, it changed a lot, and I think that really came about through just process and finding it and and having real conversations about what gay dating is like, and also kind of like the interpersonal relationship, and how in some ways, I’ll just say that Roman is a bit more beta in terms of the platonic friendship with Dennis, whereas I think, in the few scenes we see Rocky, he’s a bit more alpha, and sort of how that played into it, but also how I would bounce off that as a performer. So, it was a fine-tuning process to make it succinct.
DEADLINE: And I have to ask, after the sex scene leak, how did that feel for you? I mean, on the one hand, I imagine it might be kind of violating, but also like, people are automatically talking about the movie before it’s even out there.
Sweeney: Yeah, that pretty much accurately encapsulates my experience. You want the film to have traction and to register in the zeitgeist. Obviously that’s not the way I want to be introduced as somebody who is not going to be familiar to most people. Over the festival circuit, I would run into some people who’d be like, “Oh my God, Twinless, I saw your trailer.” I’m like, “The trailer is not done. I know what you saw, that wasn’t the trailer.” So, you know, I’m trying to keep a good sense of humor about it. All I can say is those pervs better show up and pay money to see it in theaters.
DEADLINE: Well, I definitely think it’s worth it for the rest of the movie. I really appreciated the twist. It was fun watching it in the theater.
Sweeney: I think it’s a great communal experience, which is the reason I go to movies, yeah.
