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THE STORY BEHIND THE FILM TWINSTERS
One of the Top Ten Facebook Stories of the decade
When twenty-five-year-old South Korean adoptee and actress Samantha Futerman opened a Facebook message from a stranger named Anaïs Bordier, she had no idea that it would change her life forever…
Adopted from South Korea as an infant, Sam grew up in New Jersey with her parents and two brothers. She never imagined she had a sister; nor did Anaïs—who grew up in France and was also adopted from South Korea—until she saw an actress with a face identical to her own in a YouTube video and decided to contact her doppelgänger via social media. A few dubious exchanges turned from mistrust and cynicism to utter shock, as the women discovered more in common than just their looks—and their birth date.
Samantha and Anaïs’s ensuing adventure is a dive into the fascinating research on identical twins, particularly those who have been separated since birth; a reexamination of nature vs. nurture; a guide through the often befuddling territory of foreign adoption; and an emotional soul-search for two inextricably connected set of parents and children.
Their discovery can only be described as the unimaginable journey of a lifetime—one that spans languages, continents, cultures, and ultimately proves that none of these barriers can disrupt the unbreakable bond between sisters.
- Sales Rank: #1047905 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-01
- Released on: 2015-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.24" h x .84" w x 5.46" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
“Wonderful, heartwarming, and possibly the best thing to come out of Facebook.”—Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author of The One and Only
“[An] incredible story. Inspiring and winning, Sam and Anaïs’ tale is a testament to the power of sisterhood as well as the way social media can positively affect lives.”—Booklist
“The Parent Trap on steroids, with higher stakes…[Anaïs and Samantha's] outlook is downright inspiring.”—Glamour
About the Author
Anaïs Bordier graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London with a degree in fashion design. She lives in Paris, where she is working as an accessories designer for Gerard Darel.
Raised in New Jersey, Samantha Futerman is currently based in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing her acting career. Her credits include roles in the films Memoirs of a Geisha and 21 & Over, as well as the television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Kroll Show, The Big C, and A Gifted Man, among others.
Anaïs and Samantha collaborated on a documentary of their journey entitled Twinsters, which debuted at SXSW and was named by Variety as one of the thirteen “breakout movies” of the festival, and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1.
ANAÏS
the first time
i caught a glimpse of her
Saturday, December 15, 2012, was the most incredible day of my life. On this day, while sitting on a double-decker bus near Oxford Circus, shivering from the winter rain and rushing to the warmth of my shared flat in Finsbury Park, I discovered there was a young woman in America who looked exactly like me! Her image, a screenshot from a YouTube video, had been sent to my cell phone by a friend. The young Asian woman so closely resembled me that she had to be my double!
The day had started out like any other: an early morning wake-up followed by two cups of strong French coffee and a few bites of a croissant. I wanted to stay in bed and out of the rain, but I had an important mission—to find fabrics for my designs that I would be presenting in the Central Saint Martins graduate fashion show in the spring. All final-year students at the University of London’s Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design would be presenting six pieces in May, and in ninety seconds, each of our collections, which had taken an entire final year’s worth of energy, would be up and down the catwalk. But when this requisite was behind me, I would receive a master’s degree in fashion design from one of the top fashion schools in the world. Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Stella McCartney were among its distinguished alumni.
I was well on my way to having the drawings/design portion of my portfolio ready, so I could now start collecting my fabrics. Christmas break was looming, however, and I had a lot to do. After breakfast, I went to Soho and looked over the excellent inventories at my three favorite fabric stores, secured a few swatches that I really liked, and was settling myself on the bus back to my flat when my cell phone buzzed. It was a notification from Facebook, alerting me that a friend, Kelsang, had posted something on my wall. I opened my Facebook wall immediately, only to have my breath taken away. There in front of my eyes was a screen shot of a presumed stranger, but whoever she was, she had the same eyes, the same skin, the same hair length and color, the same nose, and the same smile as me.
My Internet connection on the bus was really bad, so I couldn’t do any more investigating until I got home, still twenty minutes away. I was in complete disbelief. I was adopted from South Korea as an infant and raised in France, so all my life, I had wondered if there were people out there who looked like me. The girl grinning back at me on my Samsung Galaxy looked so much like me that I thought one of my artistic friends might be pranking me. They were all very creative, and could manipulate images with ease, and they all loved a good laugh, so it was reasonable to think this could be a joke. Every possibility of who this girl might be consumed me for the remainder of the ride. Was she a doppelgänger? Was she a relative? Was she real? Was she an impostor? Did she know about me?
When I finally got home, I ran straight to my computer. It turned out Kelsang had been surfing through YouTube videos when he had stumbled upon my look-alike. She was an actress in a short video called “High School Virgin,” a staged comic piece where she was playing the role of a teenage tease. The entire video was only four minutes long. My “double” had a forty-second speaking part, but as none of the four actors was credited, I didn’t have her name. The more I watched the video, the more I thought I was looking at myself, except for the American-accented English. (When I speak English, I do so with a British accent.) But other than the accent, I could not find a single difference that would distinguish one of us from the other. All I could find were the similarities. Who was she? I knew I needed to find her.
I got in touch with Kelsang as fast as I could and asked him how he had come across the video. He told me he had been doing some research, and it had popped up on the right side of his computer screen. The female character had looked so much like me that he had posted her picture to my Facebook wall for me to see. I didn’t ask him what he was researching that would bring up a title called “High School Virgin,” because that was his business, but I was thankful that he had. I love everything about Kelsang. He and I have been friends since my second year at Central Saint Martins. He is Tibetan, came to school with more experience in fashion than I did, and is always teaching me personal fashion tricks.
Part of my intrigue with the mysterious American stemmed from the fact that I was adopted. I don’t have any siblings and I don’t resemble anyone in my family, including my European parents, Patricia and Jacques Bordier. My mother is blond-haired and blue-eyed, and my father is as French-looking as they get. Even though there is a neighborhood in Paris with a very small Korean population, it was nowhere near Neuilly-sur-Seine, where I lived. I knew other Asians, but I didn’t look very much like them, either, although people joked that we all looked alike. A lot of French people tend to think of all Asians as Chinese.
I had one Korean friend, but she was eight years older. She had been adopted, too, and coincidentally she was also named Anais. We went to the same Catholic school in Neuilly, Institut Saint Dominique. When we had glasses on, we looked quite similar. Anais was like a big sister to me when I was growing up, protective and kind. We had become friends when I was five and my mother had come to pick me up in the schoolyard at dismissal. She called my name, so the other Anais turned around, too. Our mothers started talking, and it turned out the other Anais had also been adopted from South Korea. It was nice to have that in common with someone.
Throughout my life, I had always hoped to find someone who looked like me. I’m not sure, but it might be a common theme among adopted children to speculate on who could be in your family. Being an only child, too, I probably fantasized about these things even more. When I was very young, I had an imaginary friend I called Anne. My mum didn’t know about her until the mother of one of my school friends told her. “I didn’t know Anais had a sister,” the mother said. My mum assured her that I didn’t. A lot of only children had imaginary friends, but I was longing for a sibling, not just a best friend. I didn’t just want a permanent playdate. I wanted someone I could relate to in physical appearance. But I had never found anyone . . . until now.
I watched “High School Virgin” at least ten more times, convinced the Asian actress was somehow related to me, maybe a half sister or a cousin. When I showed Marie, my roommate, the video, she was as blown away as I had been. We both agreed that the girl looked slightly younger than me, but identical in every other way. Marie was great at computer sleuthing and tried various searches that might lead to an identification. But, like me, she came up empty.
Over the next few days, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop open. I wanted to contact Kevin Wu, aka “KevJumba,” the Chinese-American humorist and director of the video, but I worried that a message would get lost amid the fan messages on his Facebook page, or in the comments on his YouTube videos. “High School Virgin” had more than two million views and fifteen thousand comments, so how would he see mine?
Wednesday evening, I had happened to have dinner with my friend Oliver, who claimed to be a physiognomist, someone who supposedly can assess a person’s character by his or her facial features. I was anxious to get his reaction to the mystery girl. “She has to be your sister!” he exclaimed after seeing her picture. “You look exactly the same.” He was insistent that I find a way to get in touch with KevJumba, but this kind of encouragement made me more scared than excited. Who knew what I would find out? I wasn’t ready for rejection, and I had to entertain that rejection was a possibility. This girl might not have any interest in me whatsoever.
On Thursday, I was taking the Eurostar to Paris for Christmas break. Before I headed out that morning, Marie had me pose the same way the American was postured in her screenshot, and she snapped a couple of photos of me. She wanted to create a split-screen photomontage of the two of us for comparison purposes. Even before my train pulled into Paris, her creation had been posted on my Facebook wall. Looking at us side by side, I could only be in total awe of our resemblance.
My father picked me up at Gare du Nord. Although he knew I was perfectly capable of taking the Metro the four miles home, he didn’t want to wait that long to see me. When we got to our flat, I was so anxious to show my parents Marie’s photomontage, I didn’t even stop to say hello to Eko, our American cocker spaniel, who was jumping at my legs as I raced to the dining room table to turn on my laptop. My mother was disappointed that I hadn’t given the dog a warmer greeting, but I knew she would forgive me when she saw what was so compelling. Turning my parents’ attention to the photomontage displayed on my laptop, I waited for them to react.
“So . . . what are the differences in the pictures?” I asked.
“Well . . . first, you are more tanned in one,” Mum guessed, pointing to the American girl’s photo occupying the top half of the screen. “And heuuuu . . .”
“And . . . it . . . is . . . NOT . . . ME!” I jumped in.
“Exactly what I was going to say, it’s not you in this picture!” Mum smiled. It was probably too embarrassing to admit that she wasn’t able to identify her own daughter.
Over dinner, I explained that my friend Kelsang had uncovered a video with a dead ringer of me in it, then showed them the forty seconds of “High School Virgin” that featured her. They were both amused by the video, despite the abundance of American cussing. But they also came up with lots of reasons why this girl could not be my sister. My father told me about a Korean actress he was familiar with who looked just like me. He had been watching Korean movies in his free time and had come across this particular woman in several films.
“You can always find people who look similar,” he reasoned.
My father is an amazing person and incredibly smart, but in this case, I had to disagree with him. “This girl and I don’t look similar—we look exactly the same!” I insisted. I didn’t want to be talked out of my fantasy, and I wanted my parents to indulge me, not try to dissuade me, even if they were trying to protect me.
My mother explained that she had addressed the option of adopting twins when she first signed on with Holt International Children’s Services, the adoption agency that handled my case. She had told them that if twins became available, she would happily adopt both of them. That was even a question on her application: Would you take twins? She told me that there would have been no reason to separate me from a twin sister, if I had been part of a pair. They had a copy of my birth record, too. It said “single birth,” and my parents had full faith that it was correct.
My mother’s point was strong. The more I thought about it, the more I talked myself into believing that this girl was not my twin or even a relative. Any further mention of her was simply for fun and done in a joking manner. I had a doppelgänger somewhere in America, and that was that. Even so, I continued to surreptitiously check KevJumba’s Facebook page, Twitter feed, and website every day, still hoping I would come across the girl’s name.
By the end of Christmas holiday, I had stopped searching, although I still thought about her. As much as I accepted that our similarities were likely coincidences, I was still haunted that she could be someone in my birth family. What if she had already discovered me at some point and hadn’t really cared to pursue it? Maybe she knew about me, and hoped I would never know about her. I also reasoned that if I had been born a twin, I would have known it in my heart via some telepathic longing. But I had never had emotions like that . . . until now.
My curiosity was piqued enough for me to do a little research about my birthplace, Busan, a huge port in the south of Korea. With more than three million people, it was the second-largest city in South Korea, complete with an abundance of skyscrapers, plenty of seafood, and a tourism industry built around the beaches.
My parents had taken me there on a family vacation when I was seven years old, determined to show me my roots, but I was too young to really appreciate it. Now I was fascinated to learn the city had a huge Russian Mafia presence, the largest in all of Asia. I wondered if perhaps I could have some Russian blood. There was also the possibility I had American blood. Camp Hialeah, a U.S. military base in Busan until it closed in 2006, had had several hundred U.S. servicemen stationed there. It was a well-known fact that U.S. servicemen often abandoned their Korean wives and children when their tours of duty were over. Maybe I was part American, and my birth father had been in the service, then abandoned my mother? I started imagining different scenarios, but in the end, who cared if I was part Russian or American by blood? Patricia and Jacques Bordier were my parents and the only parents I cared to know.
By the time I got back to London, I had put my American “twin” to the back of my mind. When mid-February 2013 came around, I was back in full work mode. I had to get some toiling fabrics, and I was on the bus heading to Woolcrest in Hackney accompanied by Kelsang and Lucas, another friend of ours. Out of nowhere, Kelsang mentioned he had seen the “American girl” again in the trailer of a soon-to-be-released American movie called 21 & Over. I immediately typed the name of the film into my cell phone, hoping I could find her
in the cast. Sure enough, there she was. Samantha Futerman!
I was beyond excited. Now that I had her name, I Googled her, and the first thing that popped up was a link to her profile on the popular Internet movie database IMDB. The picture of her on that website looked as much like me as her cameo in “High School Virgin.” Next to her photo was the biggest shock of all—her date of birth, which was the same as mine: November 19, 1987! I froze. I thought I had probably read it wrong, transposing it in my mind to what I had hoped to see. But when I looked again, it was still reading, “November 19, 1987.”
“KELSANG!” I screamed across the bus, “the girl from the YouTube video, she was born November, 19, 1987!”
“So what?” Kelsang asked, not understanding the importance.
“So, I was born on November 19, 1987,” I explained. Could she be my twin sister? Her name was very American, “Samantha Futerman,” so she must have been adopted, too. Now that I could see her closely, I could see details that I hadn’t seen before. Mon Dieu, she even has the same freckles on her nose as I have! By the time I got off the bus, I was beginning to feel faint.
On the walk to school, I was a wreck. I called my parents to tell them what I had learned. My mother gasped when I told her about the shared birth date. “Do you think she could be your twin sister?” she asked in disbelief.
My dad called back later but he was skeptical. He told me he wanted to look up “Samantha Futerman” himself to see what he could find. Five minutes later, he called back saying she wasn’t my twin, as he had found a website that indicated she had been born on the first of November, not the nineteenth. He admitted several sites had said “November 19,” but he needed me to be aware that there were other “facts” that contradicted the date I chose to believe. We hung up with him locked into the idea that it wasn’t possible for Samantha Futerman to be my twin.
The day was so strange. I was feeling completely turned around. I think I was in shock, but I just didn’t know it. When I finally settled into the studio and started working on my collection, spreading my fabric out on my worktable, I still kept staring at Samantha’s photo on my laptop as I obsessively reread her IMDB profile. I was impressed to see that she had been in several films, some of them big, including Memoirs of a Geisha, an adaptation from a huge international bestselling book, which I had seen with my mother when it came to France when I was seventeen. Samantha played a young Japanese girl named Satsu, the older sister of the lead role. At the time, she did not jump out at me as my doppelgänger. She was heavily made-up to look Japanese.
My studio mates were hard at work, but at the risk of being annoying, I simply had to communicate my excitement. “That girl is born the same day as me, and she’s adopted, too!” I’d blurt out whenever the urge hit me. I had no proof she was related to me, but it was making complete sense in my head, and I was compelled to share. People could draw their own conclusions, but I was already convinced.
Things started getting even freakier really fast. Lucas directed me to several more YouTube videos he had discovered that featured Samantha, pointing out that she and I had the same inflection and delivery in our voices. No video of Samantha’s blew me away more than the one titled “How It Feels to be Adopted . . . I Am Sam.” It was a humorous three-minute skit of Samantha being questioned about her feelings about adoption. Friends were asking her purposefully naïve questions, such as . . . was she from South or North Korea, how come she didn’t look like the rest of her family, and if she felt sad and alone because her birth parents had given her up. She reveals that she has two American brothers, one of whom we meet in the video. Did this mean I had two American brothers, too? At one point, she dresses up as Little Orphan Annie and belts out the song “Tomorrow.” I found it incredibly amusing, but more important, it was my confirmation that we were twins. Her mannerisms, her voice, even her sense of humor . . . were mine.
I raced home to the safety of my computer, where I started sending the “How It Feels to be Adopted . . . I Am Sam” video to everyone I could think of. Enlisting friends, I also launched my massive campaign to figure out a way to get in touch with Samantha Futerman, putting all my faith in social media. We were unsuccessful in locating a Facebook page for her, but Kelsang did find her Instagram on his cell phone. We went through all of her pictures, with me feeling a little guilty at the depths of my snooping, but it was so much fun! We found very recent pictures of her on a trip to Korea. One of them had her posing with a woman she identified as her foster mother. She looked very happy to be with her.
Next, we found “Samantha Futerman” on Twitter. She had been tweeting a lot lately, so I got to spy on her back-and-forth conversations. As paradoxical as it sounds, I was discovering her both slowly and quickly, all without her knowledge. Someone suggested we try working backward to find her Facebook page by finding a relative of hers on her Twitter, then seeing if we could locate that person’s Facebook page. If we were successful, we could hope to find a “Samantha” in that list of “friends.”
We chose a Twitterer named “JoFuterman,” searched the name on Facebook, opened Jo Futerman’s “friends” inventory, and had a match! Someone named “Samantha” was on Jo’s list! I clicked on her name, and up came the same photo we’d seen on her Instagram. I had found her! Most of her information was private, but I would find a way to contact her, no matter what I had to do. Flying to America crossed my mind, but I would save that as a last resort.
I started composing a message with what I thought was just the right tone: not too scary, not too funny, something that would not freak her out and put her off, but would be serious enough to attract her interest.
Finally, I sent a friend request with the following message:
Hey, My name is Anaïs, I am French and live in London. About 2 months ago, my friend was watching one of your videos with Kevjumba on youtube, and he saw you and thought we looked really similar . . . like . . . VERY REALLY SIMILAR . . . we were making jokes, about it etc. (I’m always being violent with people and hitting them too hahaha)
Today, he saw the trailer of 21 & over and told me he saw you again, I then checked your name on the cast, stalked you A BIT, and found out you were born on the 19th of November 1987.
I checked more of your videos (which are hilarious) and then came upon the “how it feels to be adopted” . . . and discovered you were adopted too.
So . . . I don’t want to be too Lindsay Lohan, well . . . but . . . how to put it . . . I was wondering where you were born?
I was born on the 19th of November 1987, in Busan but my papers were made at the Holt Children’s Institute, so “officially” I was born in Seoul. My Korean name is Kim Eunwha. I arrived in France the 5th March 1988, so 3 months later.
You can check my Facebook if you want to check the pictures and the videos. It’s more obvious on videos . . .
Let me know . . . don’t freak out . . .
Lots of Love
Anaïs
I absolutely had to get her attention. I needed her to answer me in any fashion she wanted, but I needed her to know I was looking for her.
2.
SAM
the day the french girl landed
on my lap . . . top
When I got out of bed on February 21, 2013, I believed that my entire day was going to revolve around the premiere of a movie I was in, a major release called 21 & Over. This was my third year living in Los Angeles, doing the acting/waitressing thing. When I wasn’t in a role or auditioning for one, I worked as a waitress in an upscale brasserie in Beverly Hills. Being cast in films like 21 & Over was a good reminder that I was progressing in my career and not just chasing an empty dream.
The premiere that night was a red carpet event. Being the total spaz that I am, I don’t really like walking the carpet. I find it completely nerve-wracking and not in the least bit appealing. I know it would be more fascinating if I liked the glamour of galas like this, but the truth is, I get uncomfortable, probably because I feel like it’s crazy that I’m even at these stylish parties, with all the Hollywood heavy hitters. Even when I get dressed up, I feel like I should be on the catering staff passing hors d’oeuvres, as I do in my financial supporting role of “waitress.” I always find myself eyeing empty drink glasses, wondering if I should put them on a small round tray and take them to the kitchen.
This was the second red-carpet event of my career. My first one, the opening of Memoirs of a Geisha, had definitely been an experience—glamorous, thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. I don’t remember many details, except that the food was incredible. I ate and drank myself to the point of delirium and left the party the happier for it.
The premiere of 21 & Over was being held at the Westwood Village Regency Theatre, which added to the extravagance of it. This grand old movie house, formerly the Fox Theatre, has hosted some of the biggest premieres in the history of Hollywood, including those of the Harry Potter franchise. I was a huge fan of Harry Potter, but I could never be cast in the films—when J. K. Rowling sold the rights to Warner Bros. in 1998, she stipulated that the cast be British, except parts whose nationalities were identified in the books. As she didn’t have any Asian Jewish female characters, that eliminated me. But, just being in the same venue as the opening of such a monumental film series made me look forward to it.
All the stars of 21 & Over, including Miles Teller, Justin Chon, and Skylar Astin, were going to be in attendance. We had loads of fun filming together. Justin and I even went barhopping after set, tossing back beers while bonding over being Asian-American actors.
Like most mothers today, mine was cursed with contemporary-reference dyslexia and kept getting the name confused. But I know she loves me, and getting the movie’s name right wasn’t the most important thing in the world. She had raised me with love and support, and I honored her for that.
The day of the premiere was also my father’s birthday. He was turning . . . old. Little did I know that on his special day, I would soon be getting a huge gift of my own, one my whole family would enjoy for the rest of our lives.
I woke up early on the twenty-first, “early” generally falling between the hours of eight and ten a.m. I headed over to my girlfriend Lauren’s apartment to have my nails painted. Lauren was a hostess at the restaurant where I waitressed, and we had become close friends with our shared crude senses of humor. Being a Jersey girl, I would be a complete disgrace if I stepped onto the red carpet without a manicure, and Lauren had offered to be my nail artist for the gala. Around eleven, while we were chatting and doing my nails, a Twitter message from someone I didn’t know popped up on my iPhone. “Hey Sam, my friend Anais sent you a message on FB, check it J (it might be in the spam box).”
Normally, a stranger contacting me via Twitter or Facebook would creep me out. I had all my Facebook settings set to “private” in order to avoid these strangers reaching me. However, this time for some unknown reason, I pulled up my Facebook page to see what this was all about. I didn’t have a message from an “Anais,” so I checked my friend requests. Right there, about one square inch in size, I saw a picture of myself. My first thought was . . . Great, a creepy KevJumba fan saw me on his YouTube channel and made a fake Facebook page of me. Kevin had a massive YouTube following and very dedicated subscribers, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. And with all the “catfishing” out there, who’s to say what the truth was. But I clicked into the picture anyway. That’s when I realized it was not a picture of me. It was an actual . . . girl . . . a real live girl named Anais who looked exactly like me. As I clicked around her profile, I learned that she was twenty-five and lived in London.
I saw that we shared a birth date, but for some reason, it didn’t register as something significant. It was more like, Oh yeah . . . same birthday . . . hmm . . . weird. I showed Anais’s friend request to Lauren, who was still painting my nails, but neither of us knew what I should do about it. Finally, again for some inexplicable reason, I decided that Anais was legit, and I accepted her friend request.
Just as quickly as I had friended her, I wished I hadn’t. I rarely accepted strangers into my world, and I was already regretting my haste in this decision. Excusing myself from Lauren’s polishing, I went over to her computer and changed my Facebook privacy settings immediately. This way, Anais would have only a restricted view of my profile, which made me feel much more secure. Just because she looked like me didn’t mean I had to let my guard down.
A second or two after my settings were fixed, my phone alerted me to a Facebook message from this very Anais who I was trying to keep at arm’s length. Anais Bordier. Just when I thought I was at a safe distance, here she was again. I felt strangely calm as I decided to see what she had to say. It was almost as if there was some divine intervention guiding me toward someone I was destined to encounter. I had no other explanation.
I didn’t know what to think about the girl’s message. She was awesome, and I loved her “Lindsay Lohan” reference to The Parent Trap. In that movie, Lindsay Lohan plays both sisters in a pair of identical twins separated as infants and raised on different continents. I knew Anais was implying that somehow we could be identical twin sisters, too, separated at birth and raised on different continents. Her message seemed too sincere to be a joke. In the pit of my gut, I could feel how possible it was that this could be true.
Now that we were Facebook friends, I had access to her photos and albums, and I got right to examining them. I had to make sure she wasn’t a poser, making up a phony identity. Anais was also “secure” in her settings on Facebook, which was a sign that, like me, she took her privacy seriously. Her photos all looked legitimate. What was most impressive about them was that she looked . . . just like me. Not like a cousin, not like a doppelgänger . . . like a mirror image of me.
I started scrolling around her albums for a while. The similarities I was discovering in the pictures were uncanny. In one of them, she was looking at a menu in some restaurant. A commenter had written facetiously, “I want this and this and this,” seeming to indicate that Anais always wanted to taste everything. That was just like me. I always want to try every single item on the menu, and announce it in an overly excited manner. Even more bizarre, she had freckles just like me, even though Koreans having freckles is highly unusual. I always thought mine were the result of spending too much time lying in the Jersey Shore sun, working on my Snooki tan. Could my freckles be genetic? In a recent Halloween photo of Anais, she was dressed as an amazing black bird with crazy wings, which, according to a comment, she had made herself. I loved Halloween, too, and like Anais, I usually chose the funny animal costumes, despite the tendency for women to dress one degree sluttier for trick-or-treating. When I was finished with my cyber-stalking, I took a screenshot of Anais’s Facebook page and texted it to Justin Chon, the star of 21 & Over, for his opinion. “Dude, that’s your twin,” he wrote back. Even though that same thought had slightly grazed my mind, it hadn’t truly occurred to me. I like to protect myself, so even if I believed it was probably true, I didn’t admit it. Instead, I kept my composure and continued to investigate, and by “investigate,” I mean that I sent the screenshot to all the people I knew, so that I could get their opinions on it. What can I say? I like teamwork.
The opinion I valued most was that of my friend Kanoa. He was one of my best friends in Los Angeles, even though I’d only known him a few months. Justin had introduced us and we became close really fast, sharing our funny stories about acting school and commiserating about having to support ourselves as waiters. He was also an ethnic actor. He was hapa haole, an ethnically ambiguous blend of Chinese, Caucasian, Hawaiian, and a bunch of other races. Whatever they are, he is gorgeous.
Kanoa’s opinion was really gentle and comforting. He didn’t want to say if he thought I had a twin, but he anticipated that I was likely in shock from being contacted by this French look-alike, so he asked me if I was okay. I really appreciated his sensitivity, especially after Justin’s surprisingly bold yet likely true pronouncement. I wanted other opinions, too, especially those of my two older brothers, Matt and Andrew. I told them not to tell Mom and Dad, thinking that would make the situation too big, but I wanted them to check out the pictures and tell me what they thought. Typical of my brothers, they didn’t give me much. Their responses were, “Wow . . . weird”—they were always so predictably generic.
The thread of texts with my friends that ensued was insane. Justin was particularly relentless in his insistence that Anais and I were twins. “Sam, that’s your twin. She has to be. It’s your twin. She’s your twin. Twin. Twin. Twin. Twin.”
Finding a long-lost twin only happens in the movies. Like in The Parent Trap! It didn’t happen in real life. Just that past summer, I had been to Korea on a “roots” tour with my mother, and I had had the opportunity to see my birth records at the adoption agency that handled my case in Seoul. There had been no mention of a twin. According to the official record, I had been born alone, a singleton. The document said that my mother had given birth to a daughter two years earlier, so that might mean I had an older sister, if I believed it. That information had been added to the record at a later date, so it was even more suspect than the other information. Who knew what, if anything, was true?
A few weeks earlier, I had been out with a friend named Robyn. She had gone to Korea to find her birth mother. They had a reunion, and when they did a DNA test, it turned out they weren’t a biological match. The birth search had been wrong, based on incorrect information, so Robyn and the woman had briefly thought they had found each other, only to be wrong. In Korea, very few birth mothers are brave enough to actually come, so Robyn had been feeling lucky. I couldn’t even fathom her sadness when they discovered the truth.
From my search, I knew I had a birth mother who had no interest in me making contact with her. I had learned that during my homeland tour. It had been hard to hear, but I was coping with it. Now, me having a twin? That was completely inconceivable. Yet, I couldn’t get rid of the thought. I mean, she could be my twin. She shared my birthday, and we looked exactly alike. Stranger things have happened. But what if she wasn’t a twin or even a relative? My head was spinning.
I had to write back to Anais, but how do I respond to a message like the one she had sent me? What to say? “Hey. LOL. This is crazy! J. Ttyl?” I just didn’t have a response.
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
true love story
By bs
Before I bought this book, my wife summarized the story for me: “Separated at birth twin sisters meet each other and live happily ever after. “ She was right, that is what the story is about, pretty obvious! Well, it was a nice story to read. Now it seems like the sisters are trying to get as much publicity (and revenue) out of their new relationship as possible. I guess they would make a reality TV show if they could generate enough interest, as an expansion of the documentary they are making. But with all the youtube videos, websites, and TV appearances, they got me hooked on their story – I bought the book the day after it came out, and read it in a couple more days! The sisters are nothing if not hard working – look at all the projects they are doing now! The sisters seem like nice people; you can learn from the book what good daughters they are. I liked how the sisters alternated writing chapters. That added interest to the story - you can compare their personalities and writing styles. Their initial meeting was very touching. I enjoyed reading how Anais was stressed out about the constant filming and lack of privacy when the sisters went to Korea. Overall, the book was well written and enjoyable to read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Inspiring and Uplifting Love Story of Sister Reunited
By Beth
Have you ever wished for a twin? Imagine clicking on a YouTube link to find a person who looks just like you. Further investigation shows that this mysterious woman shares your birthday and birthplace. This is just the beginning of the story of two strangers who discover they are identical twins. I saw the movie and loved it but the book answered many of the questions I still had about the girls and their story. Sam and Anais are two of the bravest women. They fought to overcome time, space and distance to reunite and love each other. In doing so, they brought together friends and family to merge into the world of the Twinsters. This is a true story of two remarkable women who chose to face their past and find answers to the mystery of their birth while living in the present and moving forward together.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
I guess the best word is "magic."
By readers & reviewers
I am prejudiced as I have 2 beautiful daughters adopted from 2 different countries (One of the countries is Korea).
I loved reading, laughing and at times tearing up at what happened.
I guess the best word is "magic."
I appreciated hearing from both sets of parents and the University of Minnesota Twin Study. (I am originally from the Twin Cities). Dr. Nancy Segal's input and assistance to Anais and Sam added a wonderful dimension to the read.
As for the magic? I know my 2 daughters, though they do not share biology they share the magic of sisters.
A fun and thoughtful read.
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Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited, by Anais Bordier, Samantha Futerman PDF
