Dylan O’Brien Talks James Sweeney’s ‘Twinless,’ Taylor Swift

“I’m egregiously choosy,” insists Dylan O’Brien, reflecting on a burst of productiveness that, within the final one year, comprises the flicks “Ponyboi,” “Saturday Evening,” “Caddo Lake,” the Max comedy collection “Fantasmas” and James Sweeney’s “Twinless,” which monitors at Sundance. “I’m going to get skewered for this sort of quote being in the market … however I might have a miles other profession, I feel, if I used to be a ‘sure to the entirety’ particular person.”

After launching his profession greater than a decade in the past as a heartthrob on MTV’s “Youngster Wolf” and within the “Maze Runner” movies, each and every of the ones fresh tasks earned the actor reward for his versatility; no two roles are the similar. However in line with O’Brien, his fresh slate displays no longer only one yr of labor however greater than 5 — a length that still encompasses visitor spots (as “himself”) on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Different Two,” 4 extra options and “All Too Neatly,” a brief movie directed by way of Taylor Swift.

His run of tasks in fact began again in 2019 after studying “Twinless.” Within the movie, which earned Sweeney a place on Selection’s 2025 Administrators to Watch, he performs dual brothers Roman and Rocky, with the previous bonding with a fellow make stronger crew member (performed by way of Sweeney) after the latter dies abruptly. Even dealing with the problem of twin portions — one is instantly, one is homosexual — the actor says that Sweeney’s writing gave him precisely the type of fee that tells him to get on board a challenge.

“After I learn one thing, it’s like I will pay attention the man’s voice or I will’t,” O’Brien says. “And from the second one I picked up the script, I used to be similar to, ‘Roman is in me.’ I do know this man. After which when I am getting to Rocky, I had an intuition for him too.”

He recollects that it was once his transformation into the introspective Roman, who, like O’Brien, is instantly, that almost all stunned Sweeney. “My Roman voice, I were given self-conscious about it in an instant as a result of he pointed it out,” he says. “However that’s how I used to be processing the load of the very sheltered lifestyles he had skilled till that time, after which the tragedy that he skilled — and that’s what the fuck got here out. [James] was once like, ‘I adore it.’”

In the meantime, so as to play Rocky — authentically, however by no means stereotypically — O’Brien says the pair applied a “homosexual scale” on set that Sweeney (who’s homosexual) would dial up or down. “More often than not, he’d be like, ‘You have been too instantly on that,’” he recollects with fun. “I used to be satisfied for that permission … an indication of a perfect filmmaker is to at all times provide the permission to enter a route or no longer.”

The believability of each performances — just like the others launched earlier than it — proof a centeredness that O’Brien attributes to his expanding capability for figuring out nurturing, ingenious environments. “By way of that I imply your filmmaker, the piece in and of itself and the boldness you’re feeling in it,” he says. “A useful software to both have or attempt to increase is so that you can determine whether or not you’re in secure arms or no longer.”

Despite the fact that he admits that being in a song video is a “house that makes me truly uncomfortable,” O’Brien indicated that two of the ones secure arms belonged to Taylor Swift, who in 2021 enlisted him to play the male lead in “All Too Neatly.” “For that to be her first time directing, Taylor had absolutely the proper intuition to be like, ‘I employed those actors as a result of I’m partial to the paintings that they’ve accomplished, and I’m going to allow them to are available in and do this paintings’,” he says. “I beloved what she was once looking to inform with that. And I totally felt like I understood my function in it, and that excited me.”

Indicating he’s in any case “having the ability to function with selection,” the actor says his long term plans come with a reunion with Sweeney (“James and I are unquestionably going to spouse up once more on one thing”) and, he hopes, a distribution deal for “Ponyboi,” which first premiered at Sundance in 2024. “I’m very lucky to be in some more or less place to pick out those tasks that I believe truly attracted to and impressed by way of — and I’ve in me,” he says.

“Those alternatives that I’ve been making, that you just’ve observed on this previous yr, determine with what I need to be doing,” O’Brien provides. “It’s no longer like I don’t determine with my function on ‘Youngster Wolf’ or the ‘Maze Runner’ films. The ones have been my development blocks. But it surely doesn’t inform the entire tale of who I’m as an inventive particular person.”