Dylan O’Brien On Getting “Permission” To Play Gay Role In ‘Twinless’: “Goes A Long Way”

Playing two very different roles in TwinlessDylan O’Brien had some support when it came to building his LGBTQ character.

The actor, who plays twins Roman and Rocky, praised his co-star, writer and director James Sweeney for giving him “permission” to embrace the role of gay twin Rocky, despite being a heterosexual actor.

“In terms of him playing queer – I’ll take credit for giving him permission and pushing him in a direction to be fluid with the masculinity and femininity,” Sweeney told Dazed. “A lot of times when straight actors play gay, they don’t lean into that out of fear of being vilified by the public, and are like, ‘We’re all the same, so I’m just going to play myself.’ I don’t mean that as a denigration to other straight actors, but I felt for Rocky to be attracted to Dennis, he would need to be comfortable with both masculinity and femininity – in my experience of dating.”

O’Brien agreed, noting, “Permission goes a long way. James is a gay man, and coming from a place I could trust. We had a similar take on straight actors playing gay parts, especially in recent years: you started seeing straight actors playing a queer role completely straight. It started to feel inauthentic. It was nice to have his insight, support, and calibration. He’d be like, ‘Go crazy on this one. We can dial it back if it doesn’t feel real.’”

In Twinlessnow available to stream on Hulu, Dennis (Sweeney) and Roman (O’Brien) quickly spark a friendship after meeting in a bereavement support group for twins. But as they continue to bond over their shared loss, dark secrets threaten to tear them apart.

Following the movie’s Sundance premiere last year, Sweeney spoke to Deadline about creating a messy, relatable depiction of a gay character through Dennis.

“I don’t necessarily approach my work in the sense of I’m trying to make a queer protagonist’s struggles relatable. It’s, I guess, more instinctual than that,” Sweeney said. “I’m happy if it in any way — I guess I find there’s always universality in specificity, and anytime we can normalize queer characters as just going through the same struggles that we all deal with, whether that’s loneliness, whether that’s rejection… I think that just helps build empathy. I think that’s one of the most powerful things of storytelling, is the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes.”