[Dead Ringers, which premieres on Friday, is subversive, sometimes
shockingly gory, and a needful skewering of the U.S. medical system,
the unethically wealthy, and perhaps most of all, the women society
lauds as the arbiters of feminism.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘DEAD RINGERS’ SKEWERS THE GRIM REALTIES OF GYNECOLOGICAL CARE  
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Audra Heinrichs
April 20, 2023
Jezebel [[link removed]]

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_ Dead Ringers, which premieres on Friday, is subversive, sometimes
shockingly gory, and a needful skewering of the U.S. medical system,
the unethically wealthy, and perhaps most of all, the women society
lauds as the arbiters of feminism. _

Jennifer Ehle as Rebecca Parker and Emily Meade as Susan in “Dead
Ringers”, Image: Prime Video

 

In the premiere episode of Prime Video
[[link removed]]’s new
mini-series _Dead Ringers_, Rachel Weisz, as twin gynecologists
Elliot and Beverly Mantle, goes head(s) to head with Rebecca Parker
(Jennifer Ehle), a billionaire drug-company heiress of the Sackler
sort. The Mantles have pitched her an idea for a revolutionary
birthing center and laboratory as an alternative to hospitals in which
giving birth too often results in death
[[link removed]].
They could change the way people bear children
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if only with her investment of $16 million.

Medicine, Parker assures the twins, is her “fucking jam,” but
she’s less than compelled by their pitch, leaving one with the
impression that the notion of all pregnant people being provided with
the dignity of resources and attention…well, _isn’t_ her jam at
all_. _Beverly, the more altruistic of the twins, responds with an
affecting diatribe about the “diabolical” medical industrial
complex and how it maims the lives of patients and their babies every
day: “It’s a system that bullies and scares and terrorizes and
humiliates and rushes and ruins women and their bodies,” she says
across a pristine table linen in a pretentious Manhattan eatery.
Suddenly, Parker’s interest is piqued.

_Dead Ringers_, which premieres on Friday, is subversive, sometimes
shockingly gory, and a needful skewering of the U.S. medical system,
the unethically wealthy, and perhaps most of all, the women society
lauds as the arbiters of feminism. Among its most ghastly features is
the ensemble cast of complex women who hold (and exploit) power
throughout. A feminized take on David Cronenberg’s film of the same
name, the six-episode series interrogates their internalized misogyny
and capitalistic desires as the twisted twins chase their
all-consuming dreams: For Beverly, it’s actualizing worldwide bodily
autonomy for women, while Elliot seems only to be motivated by
experimentation (like illegally growing embryos in a lab).

[Meade as Susan]

Meade as Susan

Image: Prime Video

One character’s intentions are slightly more ambiguous: Susan,
Parker’s baby-loving fourth wife, who upon introduction seems to be
the idealist counterbalance to Parker’s ruthless capitalism. But a
more cynical person will swiftly glean she is simply shopping for
another wealthy-white-woman busy box to boost her self-esteem and buff
her veneer of goodwill. Actor Emily Meade plays her with a certain
off-kilter familiarity—like a person you have a perfectly nice
conversation with at a cocktail party yet who remains something of an
enigma.

“I’m always fascinated by people who seem to have a completely
compartmentalized conscious and subconscious,” Meade explained of
Susan during a recent Zoom interview with Jezebel. “There’s almost
like this facade that they’ve really created for themselves and
believe, and then there’s these little moments where the inner
person who’s a lot smarter and a lot more manipulative and a lot
more aware peeks through in these frightening ways.”

“Susan, of course, is driven by many selfish things; by money, by a
desire to immortalize herself in the world by making an impact,” she
continued. “I also think that she does believe that she just loves
babies and wants to bring them into the world. But I think her
intentions are unclear to us as the audience because they’re unclear
to her.”

Dead Ringers - Official Trailer | Prime Video

Meade is far more discerning. Her credits are pockmarked by
highly-regarded prestige television, like HBO’s _Boardwalk
Empire_,_ The Leftovers_, and most recently, _The Deuce_
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in which she starred as a beleaguered sex-worker-turned-porn-star. But
there was at least a two-year period
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Deuce_ wrapped in 2019 when she readily admits to feeling, as she
wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post in 2021, “blacklisted
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by the industry. That was, until she landed her role on the almost
entirely woman-helmed _Dead Ringers_.

“I think feeling surrounded by women—and not just women, but
incredibly kind, special, intelligent women— created a really safe,
warm environment, as much as we were acting out and talking about
pretty harsh and ugly things at times,” Meade said. “Rachel Weisz
is like, the most warm, compassionate human I’ve ever met, so there
was just a warmth and a love and sort of feeling of sisterhood or a
coven that for me didn’t particularly make anything seem
difficult.”

It’s something of a departure for Meade, whose experiences on sets
have more often than not been less than positive, since she began
acting at 16 years old. She’d been typecast, it seemed, as
hyper-sexualized—and hyper-traumatized—characters. Given previous
overexposure, she nearly turned down _The Deuce_, which also happened
to see her character either in various states of undress, under
duress, or both. But it was too good of an opportunity. “This is the
last time,” she recalled telling herself. Meade wouldn’t learn
until production began exactly what her role entailed: in short, more
nudity, more sexual abuse, and the kind of tragic end the bible says
befits all women who dare to have sex for money.

Then, in 2018, as MeToo allegations roiled Hollywood, Meade’s
co-star James Franco was accused of sexual misconduct by five women
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(He denied the claims
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the time.) As was the case for innumerable men who were alleged of
exhibiting similar behavior during that time, HBO and _The
Deuce_’s leadership
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David Simon
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to Franco’s defense
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“Our show and HBO pretty quickly came forward and said we support
James and we’re going on with the show, and I just couldn’t really
handle feeling spoken for in that way,” Meade said. “I didn’t
want to be spoken for in a way that basically, to me, denied the
allegations of these women.”

Meade weighed her options. She could issue a statement or tweet her
dismay at production’s immediate support for Franco, but those
responses seemed inadequate. Ultimately, she settled on leaving the
show, which prompted a series of conversations with _The Deuce_ and
HBO executives wherein she was asked what she’d require in order to
stay. At the time, Meade had never heard of an intimacy coordinator;
no one really had. Instead, she described a figure who would have no
creative input but whose primary purpose would be to ensure safety for
actors in positions like her.

GETTING TO BE A PART OF THE SHOW REALLY CONFIRMED FOR ME THAT...THIS
IS A REALLY UNDER-RESEARCHED, UNDER-NOURISHED, AND YOU KNOW,
CAPITALISTIC INDUSTRY.”

“I said to them, ‘I want there to be somebody on the set of this
show—and all HBO shows—that is solely there to facilitate,
protect, and to advocate in sex scenes, much like a stunt coordinator
when dealing with physical violence,’” Meade recalled. “I
thought there should be someone there who didn’t have any motives
other than their job.”

“I also said I wanted all the women on the show to have veto power
over doing sex scenes with people if they didn’t want to, because a
lot of the time we would show up to set and there would be a person
there that we had to do a sex scene with that we had never met
before,” she added. HBO agreed to Meade’s request and soon hired
Alicia Rodis, a performer now credited with pioneering the role of
intimacy coordinators on sets, who’s since become a consultant on
the network’s productions. The rest
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of course, was history
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But the move wasn’t without repercussions—notably, criticism from
industry peers like Sean Bean
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who remarked that intimacy coordinators spoiled the “natural way
lovers behave”
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sex scenes.

“I knew that I was doing what I needed to do for myself and the
women on the show, but it’s definitely been hard since, because I
have wondered if it’s affected my career,” Meade confided.
“There was a lot of anger and there still is. To me, you know, that
just shows ignorance, because it’s a movie set. It’s already not
real. If a director or an actor is okay with having a stunt
coordinator there, it’s no different to have an intimacy coordinator
there. It’s not directing the sex scene. It’s not changing the sex
scene. And the sex scene shouldn’t be authentic, because you’re
not having sex.”

Regardless, she says she has no regrets: “I think it’s insane that
this didn’t already exist and I had to even bring this up in the
first place. I think there will always be people that are angry about
it. That’s just…I don’t know, that’s the cross that I bear
when it shows up.”

[Rachel Weisz in “Dead Ringers”]

Rachel Weisz in “Dead Ringers”

Image: Prime Video

Fortunately, it hasn’t shown up, nor has she personally required an
intimacy coordinator as of late, since her role in _Dead
Ringers_ doesn’t require it. Even still, Meade can draw easy
parallels between _The Deuce_ and _Dead Ringers_. Both take
unflinching looks at an industry that objectifies and makes money off
of women, and both pose important questions about what people do and
don’t consent to within those industries’ confines, she explained.
In one stinging scene in the premiere episode of _Dead Ringers_,
a Black woman dies
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the maternity ward of a hospital hours after giving birth of entirely
preventable causes. “She was afraid of the place where she’s
supposed to feel the most safe,” Beverly laments. It wouldn’t be
difficult to imagine Meade’s perception of women’s health and
notably, who bankrolls, practices, and legislates it—not to mention
who it’s made accessible to—changing in the wake of filming the
mini-series. But really, it only contextualized her own unsafe
experiences within the medical system, she said.

“I started going to the gynecologist at, I’d say like 15, and I
have not had a child yet, but I have had pregnancies and I have had a
lot of experiences with gynecology, and they have all been rather
negative,” she said. “I’ve been very aware for a long time that
it is a painful experience for me to go to the gynecologist, not just
because it is physically painful but because it is emotionally. So,
getting to be a part of the show really confirmed for me that that’s
not something I’m making up and that this is a really
under-researched, under-nourished, and you know, capitalistic
industry.”

Meade would not have felt safer in the hands of gynecologists like the
twins, whose ambition ultimately gives way to the same dehumanization
they’ve criticized. And eventually, their actions have grim
consequences.

“I think some viewers will be really angry and offended and upset by
it and I, you know, personally always love a little controversy,”
Meade laughs. It’s not like she’s shied away from controversy
before.

* dead ringers
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* prime tv
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* Women's health care
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