Triada, the new series from Netflix, tells how three women discover that they are triplets. Everything is inspired by a very real story… and a little twisted.
Imagine that you find yourself facing a copy of yourself. Then you meet another doppelganger a few days later. Imagine finding out that you actually have twin sisters and you’ve been lied to about your past. This is the starting point of Triada, a Mexican series that Netflix released a few days ago.
The series informs us from the start that the story is inspired by reality, without really knowing what news item it is. But a scene from episode 6 gives us a little clue, when the heroine holds in her hand a magazine in which there is a photo of three identical boys. His mother then explains to him that his story is identical to that of these triplets. The camera insists on the image, to make us understand that they are important.
screenshot Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran celebrate their reunion.
When chance does things well
And for good reason, they are Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, three people who really existed. The latter discovered at the age of 19 that they were brothers. It all started in 1980, when Robert arrived at New York University to study.
On the spot, everyone greets him, as if we knew him. Only problem, it is called by another name: Eddy Galland. Intrigued, Robert leads the investigation and ends up meeting Eddy. They look alike like two drops of water and they have the same date of birth. As they talk, they quickly understand that they were adopted and are therefore brothers. After publicizing their affair, they are approached by a certain David Kellman… who also turns out to be their twin.
A controversial experience
But it does not stop there. Pushing their investigation a little further, the triplets make a terrible discovery: they were part of a social experiment carried out by psychoanalyst Peter Bela Neubauer as part of a study on nature and nurture.
The latter had selected triplets (one group) and twins (three groups), who were placed in foster families from different backgrounds. The latter were followed closely during their youth, with regular evaluations. The purpose of the experiment was to see if the children shared similarities (physical, psychological and everything related to tastes), even though they had been raised differently. The adoptive parents were obviously unaware.
This discovery quickly made headlines. Peter Neubauer, who died shortly after these revelations, is shouted down. His study is compared to that of Josef Mengele, a Nazi who also conducted experiments at Aushwitz on twins. Already in 1980 and probably feeling that public opinion was not going to be in his favour, the psychoanalyst (himself a survivor of the camps by the way) decided not to publish his results.
These revelations will certainly have allowed separated brothers and sisters to find each other, but the fallout has not been without consequence. Of the nine people who unknowingly participated in the experiment, three committed suicide. This is particularly the case of Eddy Galland, after having sunk into depression.
The story of the triplets obviously caught the attention of producers. A documentary entitled Three Identical Strangers released in 2018 looks back on their journey. A time visible on Netflix, it is now only available on VOD.