Dylan O’Brien Talks His Queer Indie ‘Twinless’: “The Most Naked Thing I’ve Ever Had to Do”

When James Sweeney first considered casting Dylan O’Brien in his modern film, Twinless, he came in with some preconceived notions about the actor. This was five years ago, before the Teen Wolf alum had started his run in acclaimed indies like Not Okay and Ponyboi. “He was a studio actor—the projects that he had upcoming were these big budget movies,” Sweeney recalls thinking. Beside him on Zoom now, O’Brien shakes his head at the memory: “Even on the first Zoom with James, those movies that came up had me going like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not all you think of me, is it?’”

Then James came across two relatively undiscovered entries in O’Brien’s filmography that showcased his versatility—and willingness to get weird. The first was the pilot episode of YouTube’s Weird City, in which two straight guys (O’Brien and Ed O’Neill) fall in love and get married. The second was O’Brien’s outrageously committed recreation of a key scene from The Social Network with Sarah Ramos, which went viral the same year Sweeney and O’Brien first met. “I used to work in casting as my day job, and sometimes people have a very myopic view of what an actor can do,” Sweeney says. “To me, it’s exciting to cast them in something that I haven’t seen them do.”

You might guess what that thing is based on this strange, biting film’s title. In Twinless, we first meet O’Brien’s Roman grieving the sudden loss of his identical twin, Rocky (also O’Brien). The character is mournful, silent, and gentle, only enlivened once he meets and starts to bond with a guy named Dennis (Sweeney) in a local twin bereavement support group. In flashbacks, we then meet Rocky—tartly witty, boisterous, and proudly queer—at which point the scope of O’Brien’s impressive, emotional performance comes into full view.

“Dylan really took ownership over the character and an understanding of my voice in a way that was really affirming,” James says. O’Brien felt a kinship with his director: “I felt like I spoke a very similar emotional language.”

Sweeney grew up fascinated by twins, including as an avid consumer of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen content. Some years ago, he dated an identical twin. Right after they broke up, Sweeney began writing Twinless. Clearly, all that was inspiration worth drawing from: After making its world premiere in Park City to sturdy reactions, we’ve already got a breakout from this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sweeney both directs and stars in Twinless, as he did on his debut feature, the keen comedy Straight Up. “I wasn’t gung ho to do the masochist ball again,” he says with a laugh. “Even the idea of me opposite Dylan O’Brien, who’s famous while I’m literally nobody—that’s not good business! That’s the producer side of my brain.” Yet the film’s actual producer, Oscar nominee David Permut (Hacksaw Ridge), gave Sweeney the confidence to go for it.

From there, he and O’Brien worked to find a deep, off-kilter intimacy. “On day two, we were doing an intimate conversation scene, and I’m like, ‘The crew’s away, we’ve got to go,’ and Dylan was like, ‘No, we can take time and rehearse this with us and everyone else can wait,’” Sweeney says. “Even that moment of calm and having it just between us, it really set the tone…. Dylan really advocated for that.”

Sweeney and Dylan share most of their scenes in the film, which goes to some delightfully surprising, discomfiting, and absurdist places. There’s pain to Twinless, but it’s laced with obscure, cuttingly truthful comedy. “That loss of the ground underneath you walking around this world is so tragic,” O’Brien says. “It just broke my heart in such a profound way when I first read it.”

His most emotional scene in the movie pushed him to look inward. “I honored it verbatim on the day, which might be the only time in my career that’s happened,” O’Brien says with a laugh. “It’s the most naked thing I’ve ever had to do on a set. Even at 32 years old—I’ve been doing this for going on 15 years now. It’s so beautiful that you can still have a moment that is such an impactful evolution for yourself.”

“After he did that scene, it was so fucking good. And then I had to do my [big] scene the next day,” Sweeney adds. “I was like, Fuck. If I don’t get this, I’m going to ruin the movie. That terrified me.”

Another thing that got Sweeney’s anxiety going: Shooting a rich, graphic sex scene. “It was the most revealing, mature scene that I had done in my directing career so far,” he says. Yet Twinless finds its funky heart in its most romantic, explicit aspects, building on the nuanced and textured approach to queerness that Sweeney first demonstrated in Straight Up. “It’s just one of those things you throw yourself into,” O’Brien says. “The crew was really tight-knit, and it was a cool vibe. Everyone got what we were doing.” So much so that Sweeney and O’Brien didn’t need as much assistance as expected.

“We decided to have an intimacy coordinator on set—but I don’t think we needed one, and I don’t think the intimacy coordinator thought we needed one,” Sweeney says. O’Brien booms with laughter at the memory. “He was hilarious,” O’Brien says. “He ducked out early. He’s like, ‘Oh, you’re good.’”

This feature is part of Awards Insider’s exclusive Sundance 2025 coverage.

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