How to Tell This Year’s Doppelgängers, Evil Twins, and Alter Egos Apart
If you thought Ryan Reynolds’s now-controversial double duty as Dead- and Nicepool was a stretch, just wait for all the clones coming your way. It has never been easier — through high-tech tricks or the old-fashioned way of clothing choices — to make copies of actors, granting them the best scene partner imaginable: themselves. Look at screens big and small, and stages with and without screens, and multiples are everywhere this year.
The Makeup & Wigs
The Alto Knights
Two Italian American mobsters, both played by Robert De Niro. One has dark hair; one has gray hair. One has a prosthetic nose (Frank Costello); one has a prosthetic chin (Vito Genovese). This film hopes you’ll be impressed by one De Niro doing a Pesci impression while the other does classic De Niro, evoking the spirit of Martin Scorsese’s slicker masterpieces.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sarah Snook performs this one-woman Broadway show for two hours with no breaks and changes wigs and facial hair throughout. As Oscar Wilde’s Dorian and friends (and lovers and enemies), she puts on a pompadour, a thin mustache, bouncy blonde curls, and, most notably, an aggressively fluffy set of sideburns.
Black Mirror: ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’
Most of the sentient clones and their tech employee counterparts in this riff on Fortnite and Star Trek resemble each other, but Jimmi Simpson’s snide CEO Walton, whom the clones lost the end of the original episode, has gone full caveman by his lonesome. Simpson as clone Walton gamely boasts a long, scraggly wig and barely-there sarong until he’s rescued by his shipmates.
Doctor Odyssey
Of course this cruise-set medical soap opera gave its titular Doctor Odyssey — that’s Max Bankman, played by Joshua Jackson — a twin brother, Merrill Bankman, also played by Joshua Jackson. As Doc Odd’s dad-bod doppelgänger, Jackson opts for modest flannel and a shaggier haircut. Merrill has everything Max doesn’t: a wife, kids, a house to himself, a literal white picket fence. In a show that may or may not be set in purgatory, or heaven, or something else entirely, a twin reveal raises the question, Is Merrill a vision of Max’s future or his path not taken?
The Voice
Mickey 17
Mickey 17 sounds like Stimpy. Mickey 18 sounds like Ren. Mickeys 1 through 16 all have that high-pitched, New York–ish accent that Robert Pattinson perfected to make his oft-cloned protagonist in Bong Joon Ho’s latest film feel distinct before each iteration gets thrown in the trash. “I kind of wanted to do this cartoon-character performance. You start out really, really extreme and then kind of gradually tone it down,” Pattinson told the AP of the thinking behind his wild tones, explaining he initially thought to do Steve-O from Jackass — the ultimate human cartoon.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
At first, it almost seems as though Sarah Snook might just read the text of Wilde’s novella verbatim, casting an easy authority over his prose. Soon, however, she’s doing voices: a high-pitched squeal for doomed painter Basil, a low sexy drawl for cad-about-town Lord Henry, and a slick youthful confidence to the titular Dorian. Snook does individual voices for both men and women of myriad ages and social classes, none of which resemble her bouncy native Aussie accent. While the show uses some movie magic to copy-paste Snook across the stage, it’s always clear who’s speaking when, even when her characters interrupt one another.
The Styling
The Monkey
One Theo James is hot and mean in a leather jacket and hair gel; the other one dresses like a boy on school-picture day in wire-frame glasses and a collared shirt. The former (Bill) is a little evil, the latter (Hal) is a little wimpy, but these twins will have to go to war against each other if they want to destroy the monkey toy that’s been killing their family members one by one.
Sinners
It’ll sound like we’re joking, but the biggest difference between the Michael B. Jordan twins Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s pulpy vampire flick is that Smoke (the moody nice guy with a heart of gold) dresses in blue and wears a newsboy hat while Stack (the affable bad boy) dresses in red and wears a wide-brimmed hat and a gold grill.
Twinless
James Sweeney’s sophomore feature, which debuted at Sundance, tells the story of a man who becomes obsessed with a pair of twins: one gay, one straight, both gorgeous and played by dylan o’brien. The straight one (Roman) is boorish and bro-y, with not much style, whereas his queer counterpart (Rocky) wears short shorts, bright colors, and, yes, even a little mustache.
The CGI
Captain America: Brave New World
Call us crazy, but Harrison Ford’s President Thaddeus Ross and his Red Hulk alter ego don’t even look that similar — in fact, the Red Hulk has a completely different, darker haircut compared with his grayer human self’s.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
When Wilde wrote his vanity satire, he never could have predicted that eventually we’d all be able to yassify ourselves in real time on a device. In this production, Snook-as-Gray modifies her appearance on a phone projected out to the audience. Lips balloon, cheekbones hollow, eyelashes stretch up toward the border of the screen. Director Kip Williams wanted to show how “this digital era of unprecedented public performance of self” forms contradictory layers of self-image. Part of the thrill of the staging is the use of screens, which drop down from the ceiling to display Snook as different characters that interact with one another and with the real-life Snook. She’s surrounded by images of herself, edited older or younger, against green screen so all the Snooks can sit at a table together.
Your Imagination
Severance
The Innies and Outies of Ben Stiller’s bizarre workplace drama are mostly separated by knowledge and memory, not appearance, which saves Adam Scott from having to wear a wig while trying to bust out of Lumon (and has viewers thrilled whenever Britt Lower does her Helly R. strut). We’ve now seen the Marks go somewhat face to face, separated by camcorder, the raw pain of Outie Mark (cast in blue light) pit against Innie Mark’s (cast in orange light) growing self-actualization. Scott infuses their pieced-together confidence with nervy skepticism, as though these men can’t quite trust their reflections. It’s not all facial tics and tones of voice that differentiate the severed Lumon employees. The show teaches you to watch how the characters move through their respective worlds as they attempt to topple what separates them while preserving what they truly care about.
Vanya
Andrew Scott plays not only the titular Vanya but seven other characters in this Off Broadway take on the Chekhov classic. Wearing his own clothes, the Irish actor hits the stage with little props — a dishrag for Sonia, a gold chain for Helena, a tennis ball for the doctor — to differentiate the show’s wry and tragic family members, each yearning for love or success or something in-between, as they grapple with their shared unhappiness. By the end of the night, however, any external, discerning traits fade away, leaving Scott by his lonesome.
Black Mirror: ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’
Once again, Cristin Milioti leads both the tech employees and their virtual clones. Her characters’ differences are almost entirely in personality. As Nanette Cole in the real world, she’s timid and awkward; as Nanette Cole the captain of the USS Callister, she’s confident and cool.
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