If you need a recommendation for a good ballpoint pen, it might be worth giving Michelle Monaghan a call.
To prepare for her role on Netflix's Echoes, where the actress plays twin sisters Leni and Gina, Monaghan had a big task in front of her—so she went a little crazy on office supplies.
"It was double the work. If you could have just seen the mess of papers and Post-Its and marks and highlighters and all the things," Monaghan exclusively told E! News. "I think I went to Staples and dropped like a couple hundred bucks just on organizational things because I needed it so, so badly."
Monaghan isn't just playing twins on the series, she's playing twins who swap lives on their birthdays every year. So, yeah, the shopping spree was necessary.
"I had different colors for each character," she explained. "It was super, super important to be able to understand the very different, unique characteristics that each character has with each relationship in each world that they live in. There's small, nuanced things that you may catch, or maybe not, that I tried to make unique to each woman."
Luckily, Monaghan said it all paid off once she got on set.
"It was very complicated because I really needed to individuate the women, but also create this very unique bond that twins share," she said,. "Once we started, I felt very comfortable in their skin and I could go in and out of their respective characters."
Despite all of the professional prep that went into playing twins who swap lives, Monaghan laughed when asked how long she'd be able to keep up the same charade in real life.
"Oh, like a day," she joked. "I mean, that's it. Look at our lives, they're complicated enough! I look at my calendar, I look at all the things I have to do. I have two kids. You'd really have to be super, super cunning and organized—and I think I'm organized. Listen, you'd need to drop another couple grand at Staples to keep that figured out."
All eight episodes of Echoes—which also stars Matt Bomer, Daniel Sunjata, Ali Stroker and Karen Robinson—drop Aug. 19 on Netflix.