The Untold Truth Of TLC's Extreme Sisters
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Each holiday season brings TV airings of the 1954 classic "White Christmas," featuring Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen's iconic duet "Sisters." An ode to the unique relationship shared by female siblings, the song declares that the sisters "think and ... act as one," adding the warning, "Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister."
In spring 2021, the TLC network debuted "Extreme Sisters," a reality show featuring actual sisters who take the sisterly closeness described in that song to some ridiculously intense levels. "From eating the same foods, to sleeping in the same bed and even sharing a boyfriend, some of these sister fascinations are sure to make you think twice about how close sisters can really be," the TLC press release described the show. "In 'Extreme Sisters,' we will introduce sets of inseparable sisters whose bonds are raw, honest and perhaps a little unconventional," noted TLC president Howard Lee in the release for the series, which showcases five sets of siblings who exhibit a level of closeness that can charitably be described as obsessive.
To find out even more, read on to discover the untold truth of TLC's "Extreme Sisters."
Sisters Brooke and Baylee still share a bed, even though one of them is married
One set of sisters featured on TLC's "Extreme Sisters" are Brooke and Baylee, nicknamed "the Candaces" because of their actual names: Candace-Brooke and Candace-Baylee, as noted by People. Like the other sisters in the series, Brooke and Baylee are inseparable. "When we were kids, no matter where we stayed, Baylee and I always shared a bed," Brooke said in a clip shared by People. "That was just kind of our safe space with each other."
Sleeping together, however, isn't something that abated after Brooke and Baylee became adults — or even when Brooke got married. As Brooke's husband, Denver, griped, Baylee had slept in bed with them for "three of the last four nights." When Denver complained to his wife about the situation, she suggested perhaps he should take the middle spot in bed. "That's not the point," he exclaimed. "That's not the resolution."
Ultimately, now that she's married, Brooke came to the realization that she needed to "detach from my sister a little bit, but it's so hard, it really is. 'Cause she's my best friend." Baylee, however, admitted she wasn't making things easy on her sister. "I'm not really trying that hard to detach," she confessed.
Aussie twins Anna and Lucy share a boyfriend and want to start a family
Arguably the most extreme siblings showcased on TLC's "Extreme Sisters" are Australians Anna and Lucy DeCinque. In an interview with Fox News, the identical twin sisters revealed their primary goal in life is never to spend a second apart. "We want to live like one person. We need everything to be identical: our clothes, our makeup. I need to follow her wherever she goes so if she walks into the next room, I have to. We have to do the same steps, too," Anna explained.
Not surprisingly, the two live together with their mother — and their shared boyfriend, Ben. The sisters and Ben also sleep together in a very particular manner: with Lucy on the left side, Anna on the right, and Ben in between them. "For us sharing a boyfriend, it's a lot easier for our lives," Lucy revealed.
Not only do the trio live together as a "throuple," both sisters want to have children with Ben. "We want to be both pregnant at the same time," Lucy said in a clip shared by People. "We would love to give Ben kids but that's such a hurdle that we're going to face," Anna added.
Sisters Anna and Lucy are so inseparable they even go to the toilet together
Not only do they share a bed and a boyfriend, Australian twins Anna and Lucy DeCinque of TLC's "Extreme Sisters" are so inseparable that they estimate they've only been apart for about an hour in their entire lives. That, they revealed in an interview with the New York Post, was when they each received identical breast implants. Because they were insistent on having the same doctor perform their operations, Anna had to wait by herself while Lucy underwent surgery.
This insistence on never spending a moment apart extends to areas that many would deem awkward. "When she goes to the toilet, I come with her; when she has a shower, I come with her," said Anna of her sister. "You name it and we do it. We're never apart."
For those who might think these sisters have taken sibling togetherness to bat-guano levels of nuttiness, well, they don't care what anyone thinks. "If you don't accept it, you won't be in our life," defiantly declared Lucy. "Anyone that meets us just knows that we want to live life as one person."
These identical twin sisters married identical twin brothers
Also featured in the first season of TLC's "Extreme Sisters" are sisters Brittany and Briana Deane. Not only are the two identical twins, reported the New York Post, they're in a "quaternary marriage" to identical twins Jeremy and Josh. In fact, the Post added, since their joint wedding in 2018, all four have lived together in the same home.
Brittany, however, felt it important to clarify that she, her sister, and their husbands aren't involved in any kind of a polyamorous relationship. "I'm married to only Josh," she pointed out. "And Briana is married to only Jeremy. So it's not that the four of us are married to each other."
According to the sisters, they met their future husbands at a twins festival, where they experienced "this instant connection" as Britney paired off with Josh and Briana with Jeremy. Still, Briana admitted that it's "been a bit of a struggle" trying to create boundaries and get some alone time with their respective spouses, something they experienced for the first time while shooting "Extreme Sisters." "There was actually an epiphany we had while filming — we've never been on individual dates with our own husbands!" Briana remarked.
The bond between Extreme Sisters Patrix and Patrica has a very specific origin
Unlike the other women who appear in TLC's "Extreme Sisters," the intense bond between twins Patrix and Patrica emerged due to a very specific reason. In an interview with Eurweb, the duo opened up about Patrica's birth defect, which prevented the fingers on one of her hands from growing normally. As a result, Patrica needs her sister's assistance with everyday tasks, including brushing her teeth and even shaving her armpits. Not surprisingly, the two have remained inseparable throughout their lives.
Patrix and Patrica's ultra-close sibling relationship is complicated by the fact that Patrica is married while Patrix is not. "It's a challenge, but you have to learn to balance it out," Patrica told Eurweb of maintaining close relationships with both her husband and sister. "It's not easy, but I make it work."
When asked how her husband reacted when he first realized just how close she was to Patrix, Patrica responded, "My husband is a great guy so he never said too much to me. But, he will hint, it's time for your sister to do something else."
Casting for Extreme Sisters was no joke
While TLC's "Extreme Sisters" presents a lighthearted look at sibling togetherness taken too far, finding the right sisters to profile required a lot of searching. Joshua Ackerman, an executive producer on the series, discussed the complicated casting that led up to the first season of "Extreme Sisters."
As Ackerman told Distractify, the vetting process was intensive. "With a series like 'Extreme Sisters' that explores such deep, lifelong relationships it really comes down to what stories are the most captivating and have the most heart," he explained. As a result, producers combed through everything from social media to local news, but admitted, "you'd be surprised how much of the work is good old-fashioned word of mouth."
According to Ackerman, all the women profiled on "Extreme Sisters" "have a story to tell that we genuinely feel needs to be told, so we are there to document their individual, unique journeys rather than to expect or encourage any kind of change." As a producer, Ackerman added, his role is to simply "encourage people to be their most authentic selves even when the cameras are around," which is both good for the show and good for the sisters who appear on it.
The inspiring ambition that one set of Extreme Sisters has for the show
Sisters Christina Manning and Jessica Dunagan were "personally scouted by a casting director" for TLC's "Extreme Sisters," Christina revealed in an interview with The Chronicle. As she explained, their primary goal in appearing on the show was to demonstrate the power of a bond between sisters and show viewers that "nothing can come between that. We open up and share our dynamic with so much vulnerability, and we want to touch people's hearts with our story."
According to Christina, the experience of having their everyday lives filmed by a reality TV crew felt surprisingly organic. "Often, we forgot that the cameras were there," she revealed, lauding the "great production team and the TLC family." She shared," We didn't find it challenging at all, in fact, we lived life to its fullest and enjoyed the journey."
In addition to their foray into reality television, the sisters are also authors, having written and self-published their first book, "Charge Your Food, Change Your Life," which teaches readers how to "charge" the food they eat with Reiki energy.
This set of extreme sisters have already become social media influencers
When casting the siblings who eventually wound up on the first season of TLC's "Extreme Sisters," producers didn't have to look too far to find Lucy and Anna DeCinque of Perth, Australia. That, explained Australia's News.com, was because the sisters had already established themselves as social media celebrities. According to the outlet, the combined number of followers of their Instagram account and YouTube channel is more than 165,000, with the sisters billing themselves as the "world's most identical twins."
While their Instagram output consists largely of selfies in which the identical twins model identical outfits, on YouTube they produce weekly video blogs, such as a video in which they discuss fashion and model their new purchases. The sisters have also ventured into the culinary arena, with a video showcasing their recipe for "quick and easy" French toast, and another featuring a mini cheesecake. They even took on "the spaghetti challenge" with their mom, with each of the three managing to chow down a hefty plate of pasta. They concluded that video with an impassioned plea to their viewers to enlist their friends to follow the sisters on YouTube in order to boost their subscribers to surpass 100,000.
These Extreme Sisters were bullied for having plastic surgery
While Australian twin sisters Anna and Lucy DeCinque have taken the concept of sisterly bonding to bizarre new levels, the stars of TLC's "Extreme Sisters" have admitted they're not entirely thrilled with all the decisions they've made. In an interview with New Idea, they admitted in hindsight that they eventually came to "regret" undergoing plastic surgery — to the tune of $250,000, reported News.com.
According to the DeCinque sisters, their various cosmetic enhancements ran the gamut from plumping their lips to skin needling to laser procedures. Having all that work done, however, resulted in backlash when their social media followers began mocking their "spider-eyed, trout pout" new looks. In fact, the more followers Anna and Lucy gained on social media, the more hateful comments they received, including cruel remarks describing the two as "plastic Barbie dolls" and deriding their "fish lips."
As a result, Anna and Lucy reversed as many procedures as they could, and have vowed to stay away from any further tinkering with their faces. "No more facial injections for us and we will never use Botox — we've learnt from our mistakes," said Anna.
Why these extreme siblings are known as 'the psychic sisters'
Among those profiled on the first season of TLC's "Extreme Sisters" are Christina Manning and Jessica Dunagan, a.k.a. the "Psychic Sisters." While these siblings share the intense closeness of the show's other siblings, a key factor that makes them stand out is their claim of being clairvoyant.
In a clip from "Extreme Sisters" shared on Twitter, Christina revealed that she and her sister "are actually psychic." Their telepathic powers, Jessica explained, were inherited from their mother who was "very intuitive" and fixated on "learning how to absorb the energies from the universe, essentially." In fact, Jessica revealed that she and Christina "have conversations with each other without even talking." As Christina clarified, the sisters "feel" each other's "energy," and are "basically having an energetic conversation" due to their mutual exchange of energy.
Jessica's ex-husband, Mike, made a brief appearance in the clip. An offscreen producer asked him if he thinks the sisters' relationship is "normal," and he offered a blunt response. "Absolutely not," he declared. "Their relationship is far from normal ... it was not married to just one, it was married to Jessica and Christina."
What Jessica and Christina really think of the other Extreme Sisters
Jessica Dunagan and Christina Manning discussed "Extreme Sisters" in a since-removed interview with the "Escape to Reality" podcast, where they were asked which set of sisters on the show they found to be the most extreme. "They all seem normal to us," admitted Christina, explaining that all the women on the show "get along so well because, to us, we finally have people in our lives who relate to us." She added, "It's like a sisterhood as a group at this point."
Jessica, in fact, has never viewed anything on "Extreme Sisters" to be odd or strange; instead, she said, she finds the sisterly relationships to be "relatable."
The sisters were asked whether they felt that ultra-quirky Aussie twins Anna and Lucy were a bit overboard in their closeness. Their response? Well, they appreciate how the women are just authentically themselves. "I almost wonder if they're twin spirits, twin planes, where they've chosen this path and come down to earth and say let's live as one," Christina replied. Going further, she mused that she'd also like her and Jessica to dress alike, but "I tried to get her to do that and she won't do it."
The key message that Brooke and Baylee want viewers to take away from Extreme Sisters
Given the amount of media attention that's surrounded TLC's "Extreme Sisters," Brooke and Baylee have achieved a certain degree of reality show fame thanks to their appearances on the series. In an exclusive interview with The List, the Candaces were asked to identify one single thing that they hoped viewers would take away from watching them on the show.
"I would say just, 'Be authentically who you are and be who God called you to be,'" said Brooke of the lesson she wants to impart. As an example, she referenced her on-air discussions about her sister's choice to retain her virginity for religious reasons. "And so, she's just so authentic to herself and I'm so authentic to myself and I love that. And it doesn't matter what people are going to say. I feel like we just have to be who we are," Brooke explained.
"And who God made us to be," Baylee added, pointing to the show's celebration of sisters who express their individuality through their extreme closeness to each other.
The moment Brooke and Baylee realized they weren't like most sisters
In their interview with The List, Brooke and Baylee of "Extreme Sisters" were able to pinpoint when they realized the sibling relationship they'd always viewed as normal didn't quite appear that way to others. As children, Brooke explained, their friends would come over to the sisters' house "and they would always mention things like, 'You are nuts! Like you need a TV show,' whether it was our arguments or just [bursting into] each other's rooms."
That was when the Candaces realized they had different notions of privacy than their friends. "You know, there was no privacy in any way, shape, or form ... me and Baylee growing up, we shared a room our entire lives. And so when my friends would come over, they didn't just hang out with me. It was all of us in the bed at the same time," said Brooke.
When she went to her friends' houses, however, she was surprised to see they had their own bedrooms and that she didn't even speak with their siblings. That, she admitted was a marked contrast from her relationship with Baylee, with whom she "shared the same bathroom in the same room, same closet, same everything."
How Christina and Jessica were cast on Extreme Sisters
Given that siblings Christina and Jessica refer to themselves as "the Psychic Sisters," it shouldn't be surprising that their self-professed clairvoyant abilities came into play when they were cast for the show. In an exclusive interview with The List, the "Extreme Sisters" stars revealed that they were initially scouted by the production company behind the show after a producer had seen a video in which the pair Reiki-charged food they were preparing to eat (according to Jessica, the process transfers energy from their minds into their hands and then into the food they're going to consume).
Jessica explained, "What makes the story even more fun is the casting director actually found my website to get a psychic reading and actually contacted me to get a psychic reading to even get ahold of me. I thought she was just a client."
Looking back at that experience, Christina said she could see some type of divine intervention underlying their journey toward "Extreme Sisters," claiming that a "spirit" guided the producer to them.
How Extreme Sisters producers found Brooke and Baylee
Like "Psychic Sisters" Jessica and Christina, siblings Brooke and Baylee also came to the attention of "Extreme Sisters" producers due to videos of themselves that they'd posted online. As they pair revealed in an interview with The List, one video in particular stood out, filmed several years earlier that featured what Brooke described "a sister Q&A."
According to Brooke, she felt "we were just being dumb," with Baylee revealing they had "Googled questions to ask each other" in the video. "So it's kind of embarrassing," Brooke admitted. "Honestly, we haven't even watched it lately. It was three years ago, so we were probably morons ... And I think I actually did the hashtag 'Extreme Sisters,' which is so weird."
Regardless of how silly the video may have been, it was enough to capture the interest of "Extreme Sisters" producers, ultimately resulting in the Candaces being cast in the show's first season.
What it's like for the stars of Extreme Sisters to be on TV
Being trailed by a camera crew is far from ordinary. For "Extreme Sisters" stars Brooke and Baylee, being filmed during their day-to-day lives was definitely a new experience. "I mean, at first it was a little awkward because we didn't know what to expect," said Baylee in the sisters' interview with The List. Brooke admitted she felt "so overwhelmed" and "so nervous" on the first day of filming. "There were so many people in my house," she said. "It was very scary that first day."
The Candaces' feelings about being filmed, however, were in stark contrast to those of "Psychic Sisters" stars Jessica and Christina. Asked if they were "nervous" about opening up their lives for reality television, Jessica said she wasn't, telling The List that she found the experience to be "very liberating and free." She added, "I honestly think we were meant for this. We forgot that the cameras were even there."
Christina concurred, declaring she enjoyed being on camera. "I look at it more as a journey that I experienced that I get to watch back and really learn from and take notes from," she said.