Dylan O’Brien wears Suit and Sweater Burberry.
Throughout his career, Dylan O’Brien has been combining leading-man aura with perennial crush energy, a combo that’s landed him in everything from sci-fi franchises to Taylor Swift music videos. But in Twinless, O’Brien shows us a new side of himself—or rather two. In James Sweeney’s audacious two-hander, O’Brien plays identical brothers fractured by loss and identity, delivering a career-best performance that earned him Sundance’s top acting prize. In real life, O’Brien doesn’t have a twin, unless you count Logan Lerman, his sort-of lookalike and longtime friend. It only made sense to bring them face-to-face.
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MONDAY 1 PM JUNE 23, 2025 NYC
DYLAN O’BRIEN: Logan, I can’t see you. Where are you?
LOGAN LERMAN: Hey, boo. I’m in my new home. Miss you!
O’BRIEN: Miss you, too.
LERMAN: How’s it going?
O’BRIEN: It’s good. I’m in New York.
LERMAN: I’m going to be there Friday; I’ll see you.
O’BRIEN: I think I’ll come back Friday. We’ll sidebar.
LERMAN: Let’s dive into this. What are you working on?
O’BRIEN: Wait, are these going to be your questions?
LERMAN: I have a whole list here. The first one I wrote down, which is so sad, is “How are you?”
O’BRIEN: [Laughs] “Where are you?”
LERMAN: “Where are you?” is second.
O’BRIEN: That’s incredible. I’ve been in Toronto shooting Being Heumann. It’s based on the book that Judy Heumann wrote about the Disability Civil Rights Movement in the ’70s.
LERMAN: I actually knew this already.
O’BRIEN: How much did they advise on these questions?
LERMAN: They gave me a little blurb about what to talk about, mainly Twinless. But that’s it. I’m so honored to do this.
O’BRIEN: I’m so excited for this too, because not only do I love you, but I felt like you’d be really good at this as the human who I most get mistaken for—and I know you experience the same. It’s so perfectly on theme for Twinless.
LERMAN: We’re actually twins.
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O’BRIEN: According to a lot of the population, we fucking are.
LERMAN: People think I’m you all the time, which is an honor. I love taking credit for your work.
O’BRIEN: I was amazing in Percy Jackson [& the Olympians: The Lightning Thief].
LERMAN: [Laughs] I wish I could take credit for Twinless, because it’s fantastic.
O’BRIEN: Thanks, dude.
LERMAN: It’s one of those movies—I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw it, and that’s the bar. That it sticks with the viewer. It’s also my favorite performance of yours.
O’BRIEN: Thanks.
LERMAN: How did it come about?
O’BRIEN: So you met James.
LERMAN: The brilliant James Sweeney.
O’BRIEN: Yes, who wrote and directed the movie and stars in it with me. It got sent to me five years ago—how can I put this. You know when a collection of scripts gets sent to you and they’re clearly not favored by your people?
LERMAN: I know exactly what you mean.
O’BRIEN: I got a collection of scripts, and luckily I’m so obsessive about going through everything because I’m paranoid that I’m going to miss a golden nugget. I read it and couldn’t put it down. I was like, “Who the hell wrote this?” I started doing the homework on James, and I presumed the plan was for this guy to also direct, and I was like, “He probably hasn’t directed before.” Then I saw that he had a full feature called Straight Up on Netflix. It’s a micro-budget film that he wrote, directed, and starred in. It’s very different than Twinless. It’s a screwball comedy, but it’s fantastically made in terms of the things that you scout for a young filmmaker—just the amount of detail that went into every facet of the filmmaking. I was like, “Who the hell is this guy?”
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LERMAN: James became a top ten filmmaker for me. I can’t wait for people to see what he did. One of the things about it that really works is your performance. You play two characters and they’re so well-defined. Was there a brother you connected with more than the other?
O’BRIEN: I do have one that I like more, but I don’t know if I’m going to reveal that, ever. But there are elements of both guys that are totally in me.
LERMAN: I see that, but they’re so different.
O’BRIEN: With Roman, who’s the main twin going through the loss, he was my first hook into the script. I was like, “I know this guy so deep down in my soul.” I don’t know why, but I know his pain, I know his sheltered ignorance, I know his golden-retriever heart, and, sometimes to a fault, his physically losing control of the ones that he loves. I liked his impulsive nature combined with his very sweet and well-intentioned nature.
LERMAN: Mm-hmm.
O’BRIEN: It was so interesting to see these two humans, who at one point were indistinguishable, evolve and become so misaligned. One of them ended up being so much further along than the other.
LERMAN: I see it so much in the choices, the way that you walk, the way that you carry yourself, your physicality of even how you sip a drink or eat a meal.
O’BRIEN: Thanks, dude.
LERMAN: I’m just going to move on to my next question. Is Lauren Graham cool?
O’BRIEN: She’s the best.
LERMAN: I love her. I’ve been watching Gilmore Girls a lot lately. Big fan.
O’BRIEN: Lauren is just the shit, man. She doesn’t give a fuck about perception or the industry. She gives a fuck about the work and the humans that she’s working with. It’s like everything that you and I align on as people and navigating this industry. She’s just down to earth.
LERMAN: She’s a legend. Can I ask you some really random things?
O’BRIEN: Yeah, go.
LERMAN: Do you have any recurring dreams?
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O’BRIEN: I don’t, really. But I guess a theme that happens all the fucking time, and I’m sure you get this, is when you’re working, all your dreams are on set, because it consumes so much of your life.
LERMAN: I always have that dream where I show up to work and then I don’t know the lines.
O’BRIEN: Unprepared dreams. Combative dreams, where all of a sudden there’s tension on set.
LERMAN: But there’s not one lifelong random dream?
O’BRIEN: No. Do you have one?
LERMAN: Yeah, I was chased by an alligator in the house I grew up in. We don’t need to talk about that. [Laughs] Do you consider yourself more East Coast or West Coast?
O’BRIEN: I’ve always considered my heart to be in the East. To give the full context for the reader, I grew up on the East Coast and my entire family’s from New York. Then I moved to California when I was 12. I went to high school in South Bay, which I’ve taken Logan down to. He’s done the South Bay romp with me, which, for those who don’t know, is a very specific, hilarious party vibe.
LERMAN: It’s the best.
O’BRIEN: We’ve had some really funny times down there. I’m back here because for the last five years, I was so back and forth, trying to simultaneously live on both ends of the country. That was a section of my life that I’m really grateful for, but it was unsustainable. I have a lot of amazing people in my life, so I was obsessed with being around all of them all the time. But it’s nice to settle into a full existence here because it’s something I always dreamed of.
LERMAN: You give me a reason to come out to New York more.
O’BRIEN: Exactly. And Only Murders in the Building.
LERMAN: Yeah, that too.
O’BRIEN: When I was 12, my whole life goal was to get back to the East Coast at some point. So weirdly enough, 20-plus years later, I’m finally committing to that.
LERMAN: What’s your final meal?
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O’BRIEN: As such a nostalgic human being, I’d have to choose my favorite meal from when I was a kid, which was my mom’s chicken cutlets with broccoli and rice. By the way, I’m referring to rice in a box.
LERMAN: Wow. You’d have a children’s meal.
O’BRIEN: I’d have to honor that.
LERMAN: If you could live in a decade, which one would you like to live in?
O’BRIEN: I would love to experience New York in the ’70s. I don’t know if I would’ve survived, but it would be an incredible vibe. Part of me also wants to say ’80s so I could have witnessed the Mets win a World Series.
LERMAN: That makes so much sense, with your obsession. One thing I know about you that I’m not sure other people do is that you’re really good at impressions. You know that, right?
O’BRIEN: I actually don’t think that I am.
LERMAN: You’re very good.
O’BRIEN: The easiest way to break it down is that it’s a love language. It’s not like I could go on a talk show and be like, “Here’s my Jimmy Stewart.” What you’re speaking about is how I communicate. I impersonate my friends and people that I love. I love watching people and I love how people behave.
LERMAN: You really pick up the details in someone’s mannerisms in a way that I don’t see many other people doing. Maybe Ana [Corrigan, Lerman’s fiancée].
O’BRIEN: Ana’s one of the best impersonators I know, but if anyone asks me to do one, my skill drops drastically because I get nervous.
LERMAN: I’m obsessed with routine. Do you have something you do every day?
O’BRIEN: I have comfort things that I bring with me whenever I’m away working.
T-shirt, Pants, and Necklace The Society Archive. Watch Omega.
LERMAN: What things do you bring?
O’BRIEN: I’m very specific about my coffee. The camper Bialetti goes with me everywhere. I also can’t ever be using a stock mug; they’re always tiny. So one of the first things I do anywhere is buy a really campy, big mug from Target or something, and that becomes a keepsake that I take home with me from the experience.
LERMAN: I do the same thing! Everywhere I go, I collect mugs.
O’BRIEN: How do you make them survive in your suitcase?
LERMAN: Sometimes I’ll take my dirty clothes and stuff socks around it. That’s so weird, we do the same thing.
O’BRIEN: We’ve never talked about this.
LERMAN: Until this Interview magazine interview. This is feeling more like a date. [Laughs]
O’BRIEN: Yeah, this is exactly what I want to talk about on a date.
LERMAN: What are you listening to right now?
O’BRIEN: I don’t think we’ve ever talked about music.
LERMAN: Yeah. Just South Bay stuff, like Sublime and shit like that.
O’BRIEN: Oh yeah, and me and Ana’s bands, from our beach community high schools.
LERMAN: I’m adjacent to that.
O’BRIEN: Yeah, you grew up in L.A.
LERMAN: A little more inland. You guys are really beach people.
O’BRIEN: That type of music will always hold a place in my heart for sure. It’s such a specific subgenre of music that’s exclusive to California beach culture. It’s this reggae, punk vibe with breakdowns.
LERMAN: Ska.
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O’BRIEN: Yeah. You know what I’ve been drilling recently? It’s not music, but I feel like you would love this podcast. Do you know Karina Longworth’s podcast, You Must Remember This?
LERMAN: No.
O’BRIEN: You don’t? You would be obsessed.
LERMAN: Tell me about it.
O’BRIEN: She’s a total cinema freak. She contextualizes these eras of film with what’s going on sociopolitically and culturally with the world at the time and how that tracks through decades of patterns in cinema and the industry. Recently, I’ve been in an erotic ’90s land.
LERMAN: Oh! Nineties genre films, like erotic thrillers and action movies, are really interesting to explore.
O’BRIEN: Have you ever seen The Hand That Rocks the Cradle?
LERMAN: Of course.
O’BRIEN: I just ripped that again recently because I’m listening to her season “Erotic ’90s” right now. They just don’t make them like that anymore.
LERMAN: We need that vibe.
O’BRIEN: Because of streaming, and I guess attention spans, it’s a requisite for films now to start immediately. The amount of shit that happens before The Hand That Rocks the Cradle gets going is absolutely insane.
LERMAN: People don’t have the attention span.
O’BRIEN: If it’s a Netflix movie, I think there’s actually a clause that exists, that the movie needs to start within 15 seconds of the opening credits or something.
LERMAN: We’re so fucked. Unless you’re in a movie theater where you’re forced to sit there and experience it. I tried to show someone Jurassic Park recently, and it was really challenging because that movie doesn’t start until the hour-and-45-minute mark.
O’BRIEN: Who were you showing Jurassic Park to?
LERMAN: I don’t want to embarrass Ana.
O’BRIEN: [Laughs]
LERMAN: What other questions do I have?
O’BRIEN: Was that the end of your questioning?
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LERMAN: It really was. Now I’m just flailing. Ana threw in a few. We were having dinner and I was like, “I should probably prepare for this.”
O’BRIEN: [Laughs]
LERMAN: This is like the biggest moment of my life because I’ve always loved interviewers. I love talk show hosts.
O’BRIEN: You did move on from the film sooner than I anticipated. I would not have guessed that you would want to get into the random shit. That cracked me up, actually.
LERMAN: I’m like, what do I want to read here?
O’BRIEN: Let me turn this around on you for a second. What’s happening with Oh, Hi!
LERMAN: It’s coming out next month.
O’BRIEN: I think by the time this is out, that will have already been out. Goddamn it. I was trying to do cross-promotion. And how much more do you have on Only Murders?
LERMAN: I’m done, actually.
O’BRIEN: So why are you coming to New York?
LERMAN: I’m going to be doing Oh, Hi! press. We’re going to hang out in New York and have a good time. Last time I saw you in New York was great. We ran into each other at—
O’BRIEN: Oh, Mary!
LERMAN: And had the best night ever.
O’BRIEN: The funniest part wasn’t even running into each other. Before that could even happen, you and Ana texted me saying, “We’re in New York and we miss you. When do you come back?” And I’m like, “I’m here.” And then you guys were like, “Well, we’re seeing Oh, Mary! tonight, but we’re around tomorrow,” and I’m like, “I’m on my way to go see Oh, Mary!”
LERMAN: We were literally right in front of each other, too.
O’BRIEN: I stopped for so long to talk to you in the aisle. And then I finally got to my seat and realized that this woman was very unhappy with me because she stood up the entire time waiting for me to find it, which I think is a little crazy. She could have sat down.
LERMAN: It was the coincidence of all coincidences. I had a drink or two beforehand, so I was really surprised.
O’BRIEN: I was really high, remember? I had just smoked outside, and I was like, “I might be way too high for this.” It was great.
LERMAN: I had a martini or two. We had the best night.
O’BRIEN: Unbelievable.
LERMAN: I’m still recovering. We always have fun.
O’BRIEN: Yeah. And we got to meet Cole Escola!
LERMAN: That was crazy. Is there anything about Twinless that you haven’t shared with anybody?
O’BRIEN: One funny tidbit is that there’s a cameo idea that we had gone to you for, and then it didn’t work out. But we ended up cutting that scene anyway. The intent behind it was to be meta, but thankfully you didn’t waste your time coming up.
LERMAN: You would’ve had to keep it.
O’BRIEN: I would’ve had to call you and be like, “I’m so sorry. I love you so much. We have to lose it.”
LERMAN: We should do something together, though. We would have the greatest time. But you’re also just such a fucking brilliant actor, and I hope people go to the theaters to see this movie.
O’BRIEN: It’s really fun to watch with an audience. It’s one of those sacred moments that I’m trying to savor because it’s the one that you’re so close to that turns out in a way that totally exceeds all of your hopes for it.
LERMAN: It took five years, right?
O’BRIEN: Five years since I was attached. James had originally written it a decade ago, which is crazy. It’s nice to see it get such a cool response after such a difficult time getting anybody to put the money up to make it.
LERMAN: This is one of those situations where I think you did the work and saw something that other people didn’t see, and it paid off.
O’BRIEN: That means a lot coming from you. Just to wrap up, I was so happy to do this with you. How cool is this? What are we, 33 now?
LERMAN: Mm-hmm.
O’BRIEN: I feel like we had run alongside each other in this industry for so long before even getting to meet and become friends. You’re such a special performer and one of my favorite people in this industry, and you’ve become such a close friend of mine.
LERMAN: I’m so glad we did this.
O’BRIEN: I appreciate it. You’re the one who went to do some fucking homework and write all those hard-hitting questions.
LERMAN: I was honored to be asked. I love you.
O’BRIEN: Love you, too.
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Grooming: Kiyonori Sudo using R+Co at L’Atelier NYC.
Photography Assistant: Heins Evander.
Fashion Assistant: Izaake Zuckerman.
Production Assistant: Chancey Bridges.
Location: Floor 1 Studios.
