Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Rachel Weisz

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

The 1988 cult-favorite film Dead Ringers left quite an impression on actress Rachel Weisz when she was a teenager – so much so that she is now starring in an updated, and no less riveting, version of the psychological thriller. In this week’s Sunday Sitdown, Willie gets together with the Academy Award winner to talk about playing identical twins in the new television series, the moment she won her Oscar, and the possibility of working on-screen with her husband, Daniel Craig.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a great one for you this week with Academy Award winner, Rachel Weiss. Yes, everybody on your best behavior, we have an Oscar winner in our midst. Rachel won that trophy in 2006 for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the Constant Gardner. She was nominated just a few years ago for that very same award for her performance in the favorite. But we got together a few days ago to talk about her latest project. It's on Amazon Prime Video, and it's called Dead Ringers. If that title sounds familiar, that's because it's the same title of a 1988 film starring

Jeremy Irons, a David Cronenberg film, the great director, where Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists. They're identical twins. He plays both parts. And man, are they twisted? Man, does it get dark? Man, does it get weird? So Rachel Weiss loved that movie back in the late 80s, and she'll talk about why.

It sort of always was planted in the back of her head. And a few years ago, she said, why didn't we make that into a series except the doctors are women and they're twins? And I will play both. And so she went out and found the right screenwriter for it, got the right team together, pitched it and said, we want to make dead ringers again, but update it. And so here we are now with this series, which she is truly extraordinary in, where she has has to play opposite herself. She's in scenes where you just see her sitting in a diner in a booth

across from herself or standing in an elevator next to herself talking, doing dialogue, and she'll tell you how that worked. So really fun to sit down and talk to her about dead ringers. Also got into her career, some of the movies I mentioned. Her big breakout was in 99 in The Mummy, which was a box office hit. But really her life changed with that Academy Award in 2006. More recently, she was in Black Widow, the Marvel film, which was a new turn for her. She's of course married. to James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, and we talk a little bit about whether they might work together again. They have. They did a show on Broadway together 10 years ago. You'll see what she says about that. We got together downtown in New York in this cool, dark, red leather, velvety kind of bar that felt a lot like

the show Dead Ringers, kind of dark and red and a little bit bloody like the show. So I will get out of the way, sit back, relax, enjoy a conversation with Oscar winner, Rachel Vyheye. right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Rachel, thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me, Willie. It's great to see you in this room that we felt like would match dead ringers very well. The deep reds, a little bit of darkness to it. Blood red, yeah.

Blood red. And homage to the blood red gowns. Yes. Yes, yes. Yeah. My gosh, I've told you I've for this past two days I've spent with you and your two characters and I'm still working through it all. It's amazing.

What an amazing performance by you. What great writing from your friend Alice, who will talk about, your co-creator, in just a moment. But it's based where people don't know on a 1998 film, David Cronenberg's film, that I think people are going to go back and watch a lot of now, as they're reminded of it. And it sounds like you had watched that movie and it stayed with you in some way. And it was something that it's sort of been on your mind and you thought could be brought back to life in some way. What was it about that movie that so impacted you? I think when I first saw it, I just never forgot it. It was just seared into my imagination.

And I kept going back to it and watching it just as a fan over the years. And then one day I had a little daydream where I thought, what if we remade this for television and their two identical twin doctors were women, basically so I could play them. That was the idea. And it worked out that way. Was there something about this story, you think, that compelled you to say, I think we could bring this back

and that people would be interested in seeing it another time, in a different way, of course. Well, I suppose the story, it's a thriller, and it's kind of like a psychosexual thriller, and it's very twisted, and it's very psychologically complex because the twins are obsessed with each other and massively codependent and deeply flawed, but at the same time, they're brilliant at their job.

so that they're top of their games professionally, but their private life is kind of very colorful and very dysfunctional. And there was just something about that story from the original film that just always stayed with me. I found that thrilling and entertaining and a ride. Yeah, scary. It's scary. For sure. Yeah.

For people who haven't seen the 1988 movie, we should lay out a little bit the story and who the characters are. Now they're women, but who are the mantle twins? In yours, yeah. So they're Beverly and Elliot Mantle. They're English. They live in uptown Manhattan. They're both OBGYNs.

They're, as I mentioned, very codependent and very obsessed with each other. And Elliot is, shall I tell you about the differences? Please, yeah. Elliot, I mean, you know because you've seen it, but I'll lay it out there. For the audience. Yeah. So Elliot is into science, really into science, and embryology and genetics. And she dreams of having her own privately funded lab where she won't be at the behest of regulations or the law, basically.

And she's interested in really butting up against the boundaries of medical ethics. And I think she wants to change the world for women. but I'm not sure how altruistic she is. She's lacking a certain moral compass, and she's full of appetites for food, life, sex, career, everything. I mean, truly everything. Yeah, yeah. Everything.

She's hungry. She is. That's a good way to put it. She is very hungry. She is very hungry. So what did you like? Because they are, as you say, they're brilliant. I like someone described, they either were going to win the Nobel Prize,

eyes or be found dead somewhere. Like that's, you know, they're very complicated people, to put it mildly. What did you like about these characters as you and Alice sort of started to draw them and put them together? I love the fact that they were brilliant in their career aims and dreams and their ambition and their drive for their career is so groundbreaking, world-changing. Beverly wants to open a birthing center where all women, irrespects with how much money they have can deliver in a really comfortable,

have the birth that they want to have, basically. So I love that they both had these big career dreams. And they're brilliant. They are brilliant professionally. But they are highly aberrant, dysfunctional, toxic. Yeah, they have a really screwy personal life. And I love that dichotomy of the two things. I think it makes for a good ride in entertainment, in fiction.

Absolutely. And sort of keeping it together in their professional life while everything's sort of just mad. Mayhem. Mayhem. Yeah. In their private life as well. So I keep mentioning Alice's name in shorthand. We should describe who she is.

you were paired together with her, I take it, when this idea first came up, maybe met for a pint and a pub somewhere in London and talked this over? Yeah, so I reached out to Alice. I was Alice Birch, she's an English playwright and screenwriter. She wrote Normal People. She wrote Lady Macbeth, and she's also a rights on succession. And she, yeah, we met in North London in a pub. It was, I don't remember if we had a pint or not.

but it was a really lovely pub in Hams in town and north London. And we, yeah, we spoke about it. And she seemed interested and had a little think about it. She said she was interested in the idea of how doctors, almost like surgeons or people who live a babies might have a bit of a god complex. You know, that their power is so great. That was one of the first things she said to me. Yes.

And so then we developed the story together and she wrote and gathered six other writers together and wrote the series. I mean, it's been 35 years since the movie. So obviously you're telling the story in a totally different time and place. So how did you take that into account as you were creating two female characters to begin with, but also to make the focus on women and women's health

and fertility and questions that are so on the mind of so many women these days? Well, I suppose we didn't really have. have to concentrate on it being current just because we were in the time that we were in, we just invited a lot of experts into the writer's room. So we met midwives, obstetricians, people who are starting a birthing center, embryologists, geneticists, longevity experts, because there's a storyline about, well, Elliot believes that death is just a disease that you could cure like any other disease. So we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, We met with experts who taught us about their field so we could incorporate it into the show.

Was it nice, though, Rachel, to put a focus on women's health and to talk about what women go through in childbirth and beyond, and to just tell this through the lens and the eyes of two women, as opposed to the original story, which is a completely different thing? Yeah, the original film and the doctors are just involved in fertility. And I think they're not so empathic, shall we say. That's kind of a big euphemism, but not so empathic with their patients as, for instance, Beverly, the twin who wants to open the birthing center, she has incredible empathy for all her patients. The patients who are unable to get pregnant, the patients who are miscarrying, patients who would like to have a, you know, a natural birth or a home birth, whatever kind of birth they want. She's her whole life is, she's very altruistic. and very loving and caring of her patients.

I'd like her as a doctor. Absolutely. She's a good doctor. Yeah. Elliot, not so much. Don't look too deeply either. Office visit. You don't want to know about their private lives.

So this comes from your production company. You are a co-executive producer, a co-creator. You have stamped your impressions all over this. And I understand that the writing room was all women. Is that true? and if so, why was that important to you? Well, Alice Birch decided on which writers were going to be in the room, and she says she just hired the best writers at that moment,

and the fact that they were women was just, that's just, they were the best writers. But the fact that they were, I suppose it would have been different, it would have been interesting to have a man in the writer's room, but yes, we were all women, so we were all sharing some personal stories, well as using our imaginations to imagine things that we hadn't experienced. For people who've never and may never get the chance to see that, what is that writer's room

like? What is any writer's room like? You imagine a group of smart people in there throwing ideas. How do you turn all those brains and ideas into a coherent story? Well, it's a lovely process. I've never been in a writer's room, and I'm so grateful to Alice that she invited me to be there. And it was eight weeks for six to seven hours a day on Zoom because it was during lockdown. And the women, all the writers were in different parts of the world. Susan was in Honolulu, so the sun would be coming up behind her in the background because of the time zone. And Rachel Delahaye was on a boat in England.

She was doing lockdown there with her boyfriend on a boat. Miriam was in Manchester. She'd moved back in with her mom. Anyway, these women were all different places in the world. And it's sort of like everyone offers up ideas. They say, well, how about this? Or actually, they'll say, not this. But what if Elliot goes into the room and there's a baby in the closet?

And so you just kind of offer ideas up and everyone's offering different things. And then Alice will conduct the room and just say, I'm interested in that. Should we follow that lead? And it's like a big group, group dream, group imagining. So I got to know these women very well, but through their imaginations, that was such a ramble. I can't even stand it. It's not a ramble. We'll let you know if it's a ramble. Oh, that was a ramble. You can picture that, though. I can see it. We've all been not writing a movie together,

but we've all been on those zooms trying to collaborate, which isn't always the easiest thing, by the way. The practical acting question, I think, is something people are going to really wonder about, which is, there you are, and then there you are standing right next to yourself in conversation, or there you are in a mirror with you standing behind you. How does that work exactly? How did you pull off all of these scenes over six episodes? Well, it was, we got used to it, and by the end, we were flying. We were just swapping. We were just swap over. So the whole crew, the camera department, lighting, props, VFX, set decoration. Everybody was involved in the big shift. So I'd start as Elliot normally because she's,

she sort of leads the tempo. She's quite, she's quite on the front foot, I guess you would say. So we'd start with Elliot and then I'd go into her and make up and change and come back and do Beverly. And the whole crew would be moving. like one machine all at the same time. So it was a massive group effort. So let's say you're sitting in that diner. Yeah. I'm looking at Beverly speaking. Oh yeah, we shot that in the first week. We were quite, we were really learning learning the grammar then. Yeah, sorry. No, no, no, that's interesting. And then so there's someone sitting across from you. Yes. Just a stand-in. So no, no, much more important than a stand-in. So Kitty Hawthorne was sitting, she just graduated

from drama school in London. She got the job before she graduated. And she's a brilliant, brilliant young actress. So she was my acting partner. So she would be Beverly, and then we would swap, and then she'd be Elliot. And then I'd have an earpiece in my ear with the dialogue that I'd lay down as Elliot

so I could feel the rhythms, and she would be opposite me. Yeah. So that does sound a bit complicated, Rachel. So Kitty sounds like an amazing actor. Brilliant. You've got an earpiece in. These aren't things you usually have to deal with as an actor.

It was a new learning curve for Kitty, for me, for everybody, for the whole crew. But by the end of the shoot, though, it was just so quick. It was like 10 minutes into makeup, hair down, changed makeup, back in, and the crew were like, yeah, so we all moved together. Was that a trip when you finally got to watch the show? Because I'm sure when you're in it, you go, how is this all going to work out and make sense? Then when you watch it, it's seamless. Yeah. It's beautiful.

Eric, who's the VFX guy, who's an real artist, he just made it look like magic. Actually, when I saw it, I just thought, oh, well, there's two of them. Yeah. They just look like two different characters to me. To me, to watching it, yeah, you believe, oh, does Rachel twin I didn't know about? Yeah, there's just, there's two of them. Yeah. No, it really works.

Yeah. Is it fun to play characters as you put it very mildly are aberrant in the way that these two women are? Is that a fun thing? Yes. Yes, it is, it's fun and interesting. And I think Alice's writing is so psychologically complex and layered and has such depth that is often very moving. But she also hits like a tonal bullseye of, of, of, of, very dark humor.

Yes. And she has an ability to create a kind of delicious mischief with her word. So there's just a lot of kind of yummy mischief that these women get up to that, yeah, it's definitely a ride. Yeah. I don't want to give away too much, but I think she does a great job, too, of sort of mocking or skewering the self-importance and the self-righteousness of the wealthy and powerful, the people you're asking for, your characters are asking for money, that dinner table scene.

Yeah. It's genuinely hilarious. So people will see this, oh my gosh, it's a little dark, but it's very funny too, right? I think. I found that there's a lot of humor in the writing. And yeah, the kind of Sackler-like family that Alex, sorry, the Sackler-like family that Alice writes, Jennifer Ely and Mrs. Parker, they, are lacking in any moral backbone or compass, but incredibly honest about their intentions.

They don't have any virtue signaling or anything like that. They're just, their cards are on the table. They just want to make money and they'll do anything they can to get it. I think as characters, I personally can't take my eyes off them. They're just so, I don't know, evil might be too strong of a word, but they're bad. They're very bad. Yeah.

But fun to watch while they're being bad. So fun to watch. Yeah. Just heaven. Yeah. Yeah. I love that layer of the story is really great too. I was curious and I always am about what it's like for you who's done so much film acting to do a series like this where the movie in 88 was a movie, of course.

And you've decided to do effectively six hours, really, which is a lot, you know. It is. Yeah. Was there a decision or a conversation around doing a remake of the movie versus doing a full series the way you did? I think we always knew it would be for television. We feel right now. You can write in a very bold, provocative, edgy way in television. And television is hungry for that, has an appetite for that kind of writing.

And it seemed interesting to have long form to get to explore this relationship and between these. twins for a little bit longer and also get to meet the people around them as well. You don't have to resolve it quite so quickly. Exactly. There's a lot of twists and turns. And I would say each episode almost becomes like another film. It changes its palette and changes its tone and changes its location. There's lots of surprises.

It gets more and more operatic as it evolves and sometimes even in a little Gothic. Yeah, I just don't want to say much, but the way their relationship is just, wow, right through the end. It's kind of shocking, actually. It is quite shocking. And Alice always says, well, they're very codependent and inextricably linked, but they're closeless, as she puts it, not sustainable, which is a very English way of saying, it's a disaster. More understatement. More understatement. I love it.

Well, congratulations. It's truly, it's amazing. Thank you. And you get to be a part of the storytelling process, which is, you know, with your production company, being in that writer's room. And it seems to me, reading about you, Rachel, that you've always sort of had that storyteller thing about you.

Is that fair to say? Do you remember where that came from that you wanted to perform or tell stories or where was the seed of being an actor planted for you somewhere along the way? I was never the kind of kid that got on the table and did a tap dance. and a song. I wasn't the star of the school plays or anything. I was actually really shy. I think a lot of actors are when I meet them as grown up. They go, I was really shy too. I think just a daydreamer. I think storytelling is in a way daydreaming, but putting your

daydreams to, you know, making them, writing them down and getting people to embody them. So I think my daydreaming skills have just come into, I get paid for it. Not a bad gig. So at what point in your life does daydreaming become something that, oh, I could pursue this, I could maybe become an actor, maybe this is a job that some people have. When did you start thinking that way? When I went to college, I started a theater company with three friends. Talking tongue. Talking tongues.

Willie, my goodness. Cheers. Talking tongues. One of my favorites. I've got the T-shirt. I'm right there with you. My goodness. It was some of the work I'm most proud of that I've ever done.

We used to go to the Edinburgh Festival, which is a fringe, like off, off, off Broadway festival in Scotland and run around the street with flies and come see our show. And if three people came, we were very happy. But it was experimental and we used to write all our own plays. So I was storytelling and acting at that point. And then, yeah, I just don't know. But you stayed with it. I stayed with it.

Out of college, you've got a bunch of stage and film roles and series on the BBC and all those kind of things. Yes. And you knew at that point, okay, this is who I'm going to be. That's what I'm going to do. Or was there any chance and any doubt in there where you said, I don't know if I can make it? Oh, yeah. I mean, there was lots of doubt all the time. Yeah.

I don't think doubt goes away, really. But, I mean, moving from talking tongues to doing, you know, well, I did a lot of theater in London, which I really loved doing. And then I started getting jobs in, yeah, in TV. I can't remember what your question is. No, just those early years before you had a big Hollywood movie, what those years were like for you. Well, I think what those years were really like was I wasn't trained as an actor.

So at college, I was studying English literature. If I could speak English, that would help. I said that like English as a foreign language, English literature. You got there. I got there. I got there. Which was a great joy, but not necessarily vocational for anything. And, yeah, I mean, I think at first I just did any job.

when I got an agent, so the talking tongues was really experimental and I think some of the most interesting stories I've ever told actually, but they were, yeah, very offbeat, shall we say. And then I then I dipped into more mainstream work and got jobs on the telly and, you know, I just did any job that I got. I mean, any job to pay the rent, it didn't, it really didn't matter, a small walk-on par in a Inspector Morse, which was a big English TV show. But I got like a really small role. So I just said yes to everything.

And I suppose that was my training. So I learned on the job. And I would say, you can tell. Oh, we're going to find the clips, Rachel. If I look back now, I'm like, oh, oh. But yeah, I just was, I was sort of learning as I went, which is, you know, that was the way I did it. Were your parents supportive all the way up as you sort of made this turn toward this type of career? I mean, they have extraordinary stories of their own, from their own growing up and fleeing Eastern Europe and all of that.

Did they understand what you were up to? They, not really. They were just the kind of parents who were like, you've got to go to degree. Like, you have to go to college, which in the end did. So they were something to fall back. So I could be a teacher, have a proper job, be a teacher or a, what else can you do with an English degree? I don't know, many things. But teacher was great.

Teacher was great. That would be a really good job. My parents would be really happy if I was a teacher. My dad was kind of like, I think he was really skeptical about my career choice. I think he wasn't very impressed by what I was doing. He didn't, yeah, he was my harshest critic for a very long time. I think he only after a good, like, 15 years was like, wow.

Okay. Yeah, he was a tough. Yeah, he was tough. Really? Yeah, in a good way. He was always honest. Like, he didn't make it nice. So he'd go to the movie theater, come home and say,

it wasn't for me or what were the reviews? Yeah, he'd take things apart quite. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he'd take things apart and say, I didn't understand what you were doing or that was a bit wooden. Oh, really? I think you might have been right, though.

That's what you say as you go back and look at the old stuff, oh, maybe dad was right. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Rachel Weiss right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Rachel Weiss. Was the mummy, the movie for you that felt like I've arrived in Hollywood, or at least taking the first step toward arriving in Hollywood? It was a really big deal, the mummy.

When Brendan and I made it and we went to Mariah, when we were filming in the desert. We had no idea that it was going to become what it became and that it would still be so beloved so many years later. We had a blast making it. And it was really well written to get back to writing again. And my character was a really unusual kind of woman, young woman for the 90s in an action movie.

She was a librarian, for starters. and that's kind of unusual action heroin. And she was kind of ditsy and feisty and clever and ridiculous and funny. She was a lot of things. So that was, yeah, that was a big deal doing that movie. And so what does that mean for your life and your career? When a movie is that big and all of a sudden people know your name, they know your face. What did that feel like to you?

That didn't really happen like that. No, I remember I couldn't go to either of the premieres of the mummy or the Army returns because I was doing plays. And they wouldn't let me out of the play. Tough. I know. Yeah. So I didn't get to go and do that thing where you yourself on the, you know, people go,

oh, that's, so I never got recognized from it, really, at that point. I don't think. I don't recall. No. Didn't change your life in that way at that point. Not like that. I mean, it changed, it opened a lot of doors to other jobs and it meant that I was, a little bit bankable, I think they say.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you're in a movie that made some money. And they made a whole bunch of other ones because of it. More mummies that came after that. Yeah. Yeah. I know something that did change your life was winning the Oscar for the Constant Gardner.

Yes, that definitely did. Yeah. How so? What was it like, first of all, to stand on that stage with the Oscar on your hand? First of all, saying to your dad, no? Now, do you believe me? Yeah. Maybe my dad was like, okay, all right, you're okay.

You're okay. You're okay. He would never be more over the top than that. Right. But, yeah, I definitely, yes, changed things and that doors open to you to work with directors that you've always wanted to work with. So that was a great thing. Do you remember standing on the stage? I do.

Do you remember when they called your name? I do, yeah, I do. What was it like that night to be there? I was very pregnant. So I really needed to pee. Can you say that on television? Yeah. I was like, I was seven or eight.

I was right at the last moment where you can fly. So, yeah. So I was incredibly excited, but I was also very aware that I was sort of bulky. Beautifully bulky, we could say. Thank you. Yeah, and then our sister Rodriguez dress, which was so well designed that I met people afterwards who didn't notice. I was pregnant. I was like, oh, right, you just thought I just like, plump. Okay. But anyway. So you had to make it quick and get to the ladies' room.

I did. I did. But it was very, I shouldn't. I should. It was an incredible moment. Out of body, surreal. Like you can't, it's not something that you really ever think would happen in your own life. It just seems like, well, that's not possible for oneself. So yeah, it was very surreal. And then I love all the, since then, all the variety you've had in your career. You do really smart, independent movies, all well-received, you do big Marvel movies. Was it fun to step into that Marvel cinematic universe with the Black Widow and kind of play a bit of a villain? Yeah, kind of a nutty Russian scientist who works with pigs. She loves her pigs. Yeah, it was really fun. And Kate Shortland, who's the director, is from New Zealand and actually someone that

I've wanted to work with for a really long time. So yeah, it was super fun. So how do you, when these things come through, how do you assess what you want to do next? Because it might be one minute, like I said, a small film, it might be a giant Marvel film, it might be a play. How do you decide what's you've got a family, what's worth the commitment in the time at this point in your career? Very good question. Very good question. It has to be good writing, really interesting writing that really grabs, grabs me when I read it and the director.

I think those are the two things that make me want to leave and go. But actually, Dead Ringers, we filmed it all in New York, so I stayed home. It's actually almost the first time I've worked here, which is lovely. I actually thought that when I was watching it. I was like, ah, New York. Smart move. Smart move. Does that mean by any chance we might see you on Broadway? sometime again soon? You had a very successful run about 10 years ago. Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. Anything appealing to you? Nothing in the pipeline. No. Do you enjoy it? I mean, that's sort of going back

to your roots of it, isn't it, to be up on stage, whether it's a play or a musical or whatever. Is that sort of feel like home in some way to you? Yes. Yeah, it's the first, the first, yeah, the first home of acting the theater. There's nothing like it. It's, um, Yeah, electrifying, terrifying, dangerous. Yeah, I love it. I think we need to get you back out there. Should we be pitching you for something right now? Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah. Maybe the music man needs a new, a little reef, something. I don't know. Let's get you out there. Okay. Stick around for more of my conversation with Rachel Weiss right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Rachel Weiss. Is there any chance we?

you might see you and your husband appear in something again. That play I mentioned from 10 years ago, you co-starred. Just throwing that out there too. Yeah, betrayal. Do you ever talk about that? It would be fun to work together again? I think we aren't going to at the moment. Yeah.

I think we really love our private life as a life, as a family, and then we go to work separately. We really enjoyed that experience, but I think it's nicer to, also it means we can alternate, So I can stay home with the family while he works. We can swap out. If we're both doing something at the same time, it's probably less ideal. A lot of people talk about the betrayal with you, too.

I go back to Legrand Horizontal. You're blowing my mind, Willie. I mean, you were fabulous in that. Okay. The two of you, my gosh. Okay, you just probably, I'm going to have to take a really long drink of water. See, you didn't even remember you were in that. Wow.

Willie, no one has ever brought that up. I'm just shaking and holding onto the table. Willie. See? I mean, the roots are deep there. I think we need to see it again, but I respect your boundaries. Funnily enough, the person who wrote the music for Legrand Horizontal in 94,

it was called Murray Gold, and I went to college with him, and he wrote the music for Dead Ringers. No, really? Yeah, and Alice met him, and they, Alice, said, I love his work. Let's go with Murray. So it kind of is a full circle. That's so cool. Yeah. That must have been a fun phone call to make. Call your old buddy. Yeah. Just say, would you. Yeah. Well, I wasn't up to me to offer him the job. It was Alice, but I just said, would you be interested? And then they met. Yeah. That's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah.

So if it's not Broadway, what else do you have on the horizon? You're so interesting, as I said, because you do all different kinds of things and with your production company, you're able to initiate what you want to do? Are there other things ahead that you're excited about? Yeah, we're cooking up various things. There are different stages of readiness, different novels that are optioned. There's one called Lanny as an English novel by Max Porter, and that's almost at the final draft. And I hope to make that sometime soon. But you have to kind of brew up maybe 10 dishes. Every 10, 10 things you brew at this. Metz 4 is really getting strained. But like if you option 10 things, one might make it.

So there's a lot of things cooking. Well, I'm glad you saw through Dead Ringers. It's really cooking. It's outstanding and you're so good in it. So congratulations. Thank you, Willie. My big thanks again to Rachel for a great conversation. You can catch her new series, Dead Ringers, streaming on Amazon Prime video on April 21st. My thanks as always to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of these conversations with my guests every week, be sure to click Follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist.

We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down Podcast.