New youth series Jumelles tackles racism through dual identity
Starring Irlande Côté and Keyla Mingot, the show follows biracial twin sisters discovering how skin colour shapes their lives after a police shooting in their community.
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A new youth series called "Jumelles" is centering the reality of biracial identity in Quebec. The show, aimed at viewers 9 and up, stars Irlande Côté and Keyla Mingot as twin sisters who look nothing alike — one has light skin, the other dark skin, a rarity born from their mixed-race parents.
"There's about a one in 500 chance this happens for a mixed couple," one character explains in the opening episode. "It's like winning the lottery, except instead of a cheque, you win a sister who doesn't look anything like you."
The sisters' relationship is upended when a police intervention in their neighborhood ends with an officer shooting a 20-year-old Black woman. Their parents then tell them for the first time that their skin colour will affect how they move through the world. "Before that moment, the two twins had never realized that their colour of skin risked having a different impact on their life," the source notes.
Racism and its consequences sit at the heart of the series. The show's storyline echoes the real death of Nooran Rezayi, a 15-year-old shot by a Longueuil police officer in September.
Keyla Mingot, born to a Quebec mother and Haitian father, says she felt deeply connected to her character. "I'm friends with lots of people who aren't people of colour, and people perceive me differently. I've received comments. I really understand Emma wanting to fight against that," she said.
The idea emerged after creator Anderson Jean saw a National Geographic feature on biracial twins with different skin tones. Inspired partly by the 2020 death of George Floyd, he wanted to explore their lived reality. "I wanted them to be the same: same age, same parents, same economic level. And yet, just because of their skin colour, they'll have a different life path," Jean explained.
"The mentalitites really need to change," co-star Irlande Côté said. "Our characters are twins. They're the same. It has nothing to do with them living different lives because they don't have the same skin colour."