Local identical twins Seth and Luke Banks participate in new Amazon dating series Twin Love

Seth and Luke Banks // photo courtesy of Ellie Magsamen

Born and raised in the KC metro, identical twins Seth and Luke Banks were contacted completely out of the blue to be part of the inaugural season of the Prime Video reality series Twin Love. Hosted by TV personalities Brie and Nikki Garcia, the show explores the dating lives of ten sets of identical twins, splitting the twins up into separate houses to create identical casts, with zero communication between each household. The show is something of a social experiment to see if the similarities between each set of twins extend to their romantic lives as well.

Having never been on TV before and not being used to being apart for a length of time—something the other sets of twins struggled with as well—being on the show was both exciting and a learning experience for the Banks twins.

The series releases this Friday, Nov. 17, on Prime Video.

The Pitch: How did it feel to be on TV for the first time?

Seth Banks: There was a little reservation, obviously, like I think with anybody, but once you actually get in the moment—I didn’t really think much of it. And it almost was, like, out of sight, out of mind. You just lived life as normally as you could. It definitely was one of those things we knew pretty well that we would be on camera. That was no surprise. I think you have time to prepare yourself mentally, and you never really know how it’s gonna feel until you’re there. But I think that we were similar in that way—surprise, surprise—that it didn’t take long to kind of acclimate and be like, “Okay, this is fine.” You just have a conversation and go about normal life as best you can, and it just becomes a part of your environment after so long.

Before the show, do you feel like being twins ever impacted your love lives?

Luke Banks: Not directly. I think it definitely—speaking from personal experience—probably had more of a subliminal guilt of like, “Okay, we’re not spending as much time together,” and not that we need to, but it was more or less, like, with priorities shifting and changing, a different adjustment. So, I don’t think I ever let it affect me negatively. But it always was something that was in the back of my mind like, “Okay, how do I navigate it?” Because obviously, he’s [Seth] like my best friend, I don’t want to lose out on time with my best friend.

So you guys are super close, obviously, outside of that.

Seth: Yeah, for sure, we definitely are. As long as I can remember, we’re always doing the same things and interested in the same sports. And we had the same friend groups and went down to the same college, and we’ve lived together now for our whole lives. I don’t think there’s anything that we don’t agree on hobby-wise or even when it comes to music tastes. We’ll go on a car ride, and I’ll put on a playlist of a different genre of music, and he’s like, “Dude, I’m glad you played this. I was feeling this kind of music today.” It’s always just subliminal things like that, like the same wavelength.

Is it true that twins can finish each other’s sentences? Do you guys ever know what the other is thinking?

Seth: I can’t read his mind, but it does happen. I can’t think of an exact situation, but I know it’s happened plenty where we’ll hear something or something will be on the TV that makes me think of something else. But it also makes Luke think of something else, you know what I mean? Like, you see a clip in a movie or a one-liner joke, and it’s like, we think of that at the same time, or it’s like, “Dude, I was literally about to say the same thing.” Not that I could tell you exactly what he’s thinking, but in certain situations, I could definitely read, “Okay, he’s probably feeling some sort of way.” We don’t feel each other’s pain, per se, but we definitely have sort of a twin telepathy. 

Do you feel like you guys tend to be interested in the same types of people?

Luke: That’s a tricky question and one that we’ve definitely answered throughout this whole experience. But I think generally, like physical attributes and stuff, those vary. When it comes to personality and morals and how somebody acts—I think that’s definitely similar. And somebody that we’re looking for who shares the same values as us, prioritizes family, and loves pretty hard. And so I think all that stuff is generally the same, and you know, anybody could look like that and possess those same things.

Tell us a little bit more about your experience with filming the show and being on the show.

Seth: A big reason we wanted to do this was to have that once-in-a-lifetime experience—it’s an opportunity to be a part of something brand new. So the whole experience was just great. And so many things happened, and we learned a lot about ourselves and others and built connections with people that you just wouldn’t get to on a normal night out or just running into them, wherever it may be. 

Can you think of any particularly emotionally charged moments from the show?

Seth: There’s one that a lot of people have probably already seen, and that’s the sheer fact that we ended up living separately. We didn’t know that was going to happen. And so I think that kind of had an emotional surge right off the bat of like, “Hey, you thought you’re going to be doing this together,” and you’re not. 

Luke: You have this idea of like, “Yeah, I’m gonna be able to lean on Seth. This is an uncomfortable situation that we’re putting ourselves in, and at the end of the day, if we’ve got nobody else, we’ve got each other.” It was like, the mindset going into it, and to have that switched up and taken away right off the bat—I was like, “Oh my goodness, like this is insane.” That was so emotionally charged that I didn’t know which emotion I should show. Like, do I show my overwhelming sense of, “What the hell’s going on?” Or do I embrace the fact that there’s some individuality about this whole experience now? Am I sad because now I’m missing out on time with him and this experience we thought we were doing together?

By the end, did you feel like you sort of had a shared experience?

Seth: Oh, for sure, and that’s kind of the exciting thing about it all being identical twins that are very similar. We were able to bond on what we went through, and even though it wasn’t together like we thought at the beginning, we were still able to understand certain situations just because, like, I knew their twin. I could understand how that situation would have unfolded for him because I had a connection with their sibling. It was two separate houses, but they were identical houses, and collaborating on it all after it was over of how certain people acted and their different mannerisms and some of the one-liners and how we acted would be like, “Dude, I did the same thing.”

Was there a moment that was particularly happy or even euphoric?

Luke: Finally getting to meet everyone for the first time and that first night that everyone’s all together and having a little cocktail party and enjoying the very first moment of getting to know each other. Because as an identical twin—not like you’re looked at as different from other people, but you have someone that’s just like you all the time, and it’s not normal for the regular person to think about having an identical twin. So I think for me, it was like one of the very first few hours of kind of feeling normal being an identical twin for once because everybody there was the same way. 

Seth: Just meeting all those people from different walks of life and ways they’ve lived in their stories and hearing those, understanding them. And finally, taking the big deep breath off of like, okay, all this whirlwind of being separated from who we came here with is over, let’s dive into this experience because we’ve got each other now, and building up those friendships with the guys and building up the different relationships with the girls in the house. That was pretty cool to kind of feel that switch flip like, “Alright, it’s us now.” And everybody was on the same page like, “We lost somebody that we rely on, so now let’s really lean on each other.” So that was a pretty unique feeling.

How has the show impacted your love lives since being on there?

Luke: I think it was always going to, but I think I just learned a lot about what I’m looking for, and I learned a lot about myself and how to be the best version of myself and future relationships. And I think that goes even beyond relationships. And how I treat everybody with respect and working on that actively, and not that I never was, but you know, I’m somebody who thinks I can always be better. And I think that will contribute successfully to relationships in the future, for sure.