My older sister, Olivia, wrote a college essay on the age-old question: Would you rather fly or be invisible? She answered flying, because, she said, she already knew what it was like to be invisible. High school and middle school were pure torture for my sister. There was a particularly mean group of girls in her class. On Valentine's Day in sixth grade, one of them left bags of candy on everyone's lockers except my sister's.
I think my sister's deep desire to be noticed only fueled her long-held dream of becoming an actress. I can't remember a time when she didn't want to perform. We were born just a year apart and shared a room. At home, my sister was a cheerful and incredibly talkative person—not at all as shy as she was in school. I watched her rehearse her red carpet interviews in front of the mirror and her Oscar speech using a Miley Cyrus toothbrush. She desperately wanted to be on television, and even as a little girl, she believed the PBS Kids show "ZOOM" would be her big break. The speed with which she could say the name Ubbie Dubbie at age six was astounding. She couldn't wait to audition until she was of age.
But in 2005, ZOOM was shut down and replaced by a new show called Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman . When my sister was in eighth grade, our middle school drama teacher approached her in the hallway: auditions were being held at WGBH headquarters in Brookline, Massachusetts, in January. for Fetch!, and Miss Court encouraged my sister to give it a try. This sparked a true obsession: Livvy spent months researching the audition process for Fetch!, Searching the internet for everything she could find from former contestants (questions they were asked, advice on how to stand out), she began watching the show every afternoon.
Thousands of kids from all over the country flew in for the audition. I was dragged after school to my sister's first audition in Fetch!, Because my mom didn't have time to take me home. I remember grumbling about it because I had a lot of homework. Inside the big, shiny WGBH building, there was a long, winding line of kids and parents standing behind a blue rope, numbers pinned to their T-shirts. My sister and mom headed straight to the reception desk, into the thick of it, and I found a bench near the exit where I could sit and start doing my homework, since my sister's audition seemed like it would take hours.
Olivia (left) and Emeline at a cousin's wedding in Bermuda in 2008. Photo: Emeline Atwood
My sister says that day remains one of the most exciting of her life. To stand out, she wore fake red-framed glasses and a beret. She remembers the exact question she was asked because it turned out to be one she had rehearsed beforehand: The curly-haired producer began, "So, your cousin is a werewolf..." and my sister interrupted, "« How do you know this? »" and the woman burst out laughing.
I don't remember how I ended up in line for the audition either. My mom must have found me and said that since we were already there, I could get a number too.
My sister was sure she'd be invited back for a re-audition, and she was. Me too. The re-auditions lasted for months, through several stages. My sister and I both made it into the top ten—then she was eliminated, and I made it onto the show. I became one of the six contestants on season five. Fetch !
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I never dreamed of being on television. And I never wanted to be an actress. One of my biggest fears as a child was being picked out of a crowd by a street performer and having to stand in front of people. When I grew up, I wanted to be a cheese farmer, and I loved spending time in the woods with my younger brother, playing a game we called "Lewis and Clark." It involved searching for bear dung, deer droppings, and animal tracks, and picking wild berries, which we ate on the roof of our barn.
My favorite book «"Following and the Art of Seeing"» taught me how to read animal tracks, find claw marks in trees, and holes in hollow logs. I think it was these interests of mine—plus the fact that I wore the same baseball cap every day from second to eighth grade—that singled me out and made them invite me to film in «Fetch» . Our season's science theme was "animals," and they already had a shoot planned in Yellowstone National Park, tracking wolves on horseback.
Emeline (left) and Olivia dance in Saratoga Springs in 1999. Photo: Emeline Atwood
People still ask me what it was like filming «Fetch» . I remember the feeling more than the experience itself; I've never enjoyed being in front of the camera—I'm too shy. Every time we had to rehearse our reactions, deliver a line suggested by the producer, pretend, repeat, I was constantly reminded that all this activity—building hovercraft, decorating wedding cakes, horseback riding—was for television, not for me. After all, «Fetch» It was work, the days were long, and even though we were playing ourselves, we were still playing. Playing "ourselves" was hard. It felt like I wasn't really myself at all.
On the first day of filming, I remember standing in front of some random house I thought was mine, waiting for the amphibious boat Raff had sent to pick me up, which would be carrying the other members of the Fetchers, whom I was about to meet for the first time. We'd been taking workshops together for a month before filming to bond. Another girl on the crew, Ruby, was already familiar to me—it was the first time PBS had cast kids who knew each other, and they pitched it as a "best friend" casting. That day, while we were on the amphibious boat, I remember Ruby pulling me aside and telling me I "looked really awkward on camera." I felt so ashamed. I apologized to her, and then I was a little scared I couldn't speak.
As a child, I was deeply preoccupied with what it meant to be «here and now,» ever since my mother told me in fifth grade that for her, the meaning of life was «to be in the moment.» At the time, our class was reading a book «Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life »"After that, anything that took me away from the "moment" seemed existentially dangerous to me, including cameras, phones, and even binoculars.
While filming in Yellowstone, on my only morning off, my father and I took a hike, and in the middle of a flowering valley, I spotted a rock outcrop just off the trail. I remember promising myself I'd come back there later, when I was less busy, when I'd have more time to sit with a notebook and enjoy the scenery—when there weren't any cameras around. I felt like sitting on a sun-drenched rock in the middle of a flowering field was close to the moment my mother had talked about, the moment I was meant to be.
I still haven't watched a single episode. «Fetch» . The day my season aired, my family threw a launch party, and I couldn't stand watching it for even a few minutes. It was also the summer before high school, when I was trying to change myself. I no longer wanted to wear my hat, and cheesemaking was no longer my dream. I wanted to be a writer. «Fetch» broadcast across the country a version of me I didn't want anyone to see, a version where I talked way too much about animal excrement and, in one episode, literally said the words, "Cheese is my destiny." I hoped no one at my school would ever even know about the show.
Emeline and Olivia in 2025. Photo: Emeline Atwood.
It never occurred to me that my sister might be jealous if the role went to me instead of her. Growing up, she was the closest person to me. Our bedroom was the place where I could be myself. The summer before she left for college, I was terrified. A few weeks before she left, we were lying on the carpet, scrolling through Facebook photos of her new roommates, when I told her I planned to go to the same college as her so that one day we could live together again. «No way,» she replied. I was shocked. I never thought my sister wouldn’t always want my presence, because I always wanted to be close to her. But Livvy told me she didn’t want to go to school in my shadow again.
Before that, I'd vaguely realized my sister wasn't "popular," but I hadn't truly seen how painful high school had been for her. And I certainly hadn't seen how insecure I made her feel—how awful she felt the night I told her in detail about my first kiss when no one had ever kissed her before, how she cried in the shower the day I got asked to prom before her, how thrilled she was to get her period before me, because at least she had.
She told me about a softball game we played a few weeks after I was cast in the TV series "Fetch"« , when the shock finally began to subside. We were on the same team in high school—I was a pitcher, my sister was an outfielder—and she said, «I remember throwing the ball to you from the mound and thinking, yeah, this is what it’s going to be like for the rest of my life, just throwing the ball to my sister, I could lay here in center field and no one would care. I think that’s what happened once.».
«"Real Animal" by Emeline Atwood. Source: Catapult.
Today, my sister is 30 years old, lives in Los Angeles, and works as an actress. She performs her one-woman show at Fringe festivals around the world, as well as in theaters in New York and London. She tells stories with such expressive gestures that the other day, while we were in a taxi doing karaoke, her feet somehow ended up on the ceiling. She loves to be seen, and she doesn't care when, where, how, or by whom. She says that participating in Fetch show changed her life because that's when she started to develop "thick skin.".
I'll never be as brave as my sister. I still find it hard to go to Fringe shows with her because the performers love to pick out people in the audience. If I could hide under a chair, I would. People still ask me about Fetch , and when they ask, I think only of her, of how desperately she wanted to be noticed, how I was better at attracting attention to myself than she was, and yet she was better at seeing me than I was at seeing her.
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Emeline Atwood's book "« "A real animal"» comes out July 7th and is now available for pre-order in all bookstores.
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