The 1998 remake of The Parent Trap has become a beloved classic for many Disney fans and two of its stars recently reunited for a very interesting reason. Lisa Ann Walter and Elaine Hendrix were the subjects of Ancestry’s new YouTube series “unFamiliar.”
Elaine Hendrix and Lisa Ann Walter. Cedit: Ancestry Unfamiliar
- Walter, who played Chessy, and Hendrix, who played Meredith Blake, were enemies on screen but are very good friends in the real world.
- The two got together for the first episode of Ancestry’s “unFamiliar,” which drops celebrities and their relatives into untold stories of their past.
- In the episode, which can be seen below, Hendrix surprises Walter by showing up to reveal that their great great-grandparents lived on the same street in New York City in the earl 1900s.
- The two agree that it is likely they knew each other as they share this emotional moment.
- Watch the episode below:
- Entertainment Weekly shared an interview with the two actresses in which they talked about this experience a bit:
- Elaine Hendrix: “Ancestry reached out and said, ‘Hey, we have this idea. Would you be game for it?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ And I don't know that they had done any research yet at that point. I don't think so, because I had to give them information. And so we just knew that I also had Italian roots in my family on my mother's side. But once they started digging, they're like, ‘Are you ready for this? Your great-grandparents and her great-grandparents lived two blocks from each other.’ It's crazy. And back then there were very specific neighborhoods that very specific groups of people lived in. And so two blocks was like nothing, that was basically next door to one another, and they were part of the same community, and they had to have known each other. So it just makes sense. It's like, ‘Oh, of course. Of course, we have this connection.’”
- Lisa Ann Walter: “When we found out that they knew each other, well, for me it was a shock that [Hendrix] was there at all. I half expected to be told that we were actually related. For real. But then when they said they lived a block and a half from each other, I was like, ‘Yeah. Yup.’”
- You can read the full EW interview here and stream The Parent Trap on Disney+ now.