Anais Bordier and Samantha Futerman have the same laugh and the same freckled cheeks. They wear their hair the same way and have since they were babies. They share a hatred of cooked carrots, a love of the same color nail polish and the need to sleep 10 hours a day.
The pair tease, poke and prod each other like they’ve grown up together, but they didn’t. Neither woman knew she had an identical twin sister until less than two years ago.
That’s where the power of the Internet, a lot of luck and a series of “what ifs” enter the picture.
I sat down with the 26-year-old sisters in Central Park recently to talk about their new book “Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited,” which chronicles their thoroughly modern reunion.
Bordier, who grew up in Paris, is an aspiring fashion designer who was studying in London. On a Saturday in December 2012, while she was on a bus, a friend sent her a screen shot of a YouTube video featuring Futerman, who is an actress.
“I’m automatically thinking, ‘Oh, who posted a video of me on YouTube?’ ” she said with a laugh. The resemblance was uncanny. When she got home, she looked again and realized it wasn’t her but a girl who looked exactly like her who lived in the United States.
She looked for credits on the video to find the woman’s name but couldn’t find anything, so she dropped the matter.
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“Basically, I wake up to 20 text messages, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m on my way to work.’ ‘It’s cold out,’ ” Futerman said. “It’s just completely arbitrary things that happen during the day. And it’s constant.”
Bordier says Futerman is always waking her up in the morning via text because of the time difference. She’ll get messages like, “Wake up, you’re late,” she said.
“It’s amazing to feel that someone is always awake somewhere in the world, and you feel protected,” Bordier said.
They may have been torn apart as babies, but they say they are now forever bonded.
“We’re not worried about being separated again,” Futerman said.
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