Tell Me Who I Am on Netflix: What the documentary doesn't tell you (2024)

Note: The following article contains discussion of sexual misconduct allegations that some readers may find upsetting. It also contains spoilers for Tell Me Who I Am on Netflix.

Tell Me Who I Am is Netflix's latest original documentary offering, but its story is so shocking that you might be left wondering whether it's true. Unfortunately though, based on a memoir of the same name (written with author Joanna Hodgkin), the documentary is not a work of fiction.

The film introduces twin brothers Alex and Marcus Lewis, both now in their 50s, who are each working through trauma.

The first act of the documentary is told from Alex's perspective; he reveals that he lost his memory as the result of a motorbike accident when he was 18 years old. Waking up in hospital with no memory of what had happened, what came before or even recognising the woman standing by his bedside as his mother, the only person he did know was his twin brother Marcus.

As a result, Marcus became the truth on which Alex built up a picture of his life. He trusted him implicitly with every fact and tidbit that was given to him, in order to fill in the blanks of his long-term memory left behind by the crash.

For Marcus, this newfound role offered the opportunity to build a picture of the life that he'd always wanted for both his brother and himself. He took the decision to erase the years of anguish and pain they had suffered at the hands of their mother, who sexually abused them both as children. Instead, Marcus introduced Alex to a fictional family life filled with holidays and happy memories.

"I painted a picture of a normal family," Marcus told the camera. "But none of that was true. It was a fantasy that I was creating for him."

He later explained that he felt some guilt about doing it. "But telling him the truth was a thousand times worse than telling him a lie. So I was damned if I did, and I was damned if I didn't... I had to choose between the two. I chose, in the end, to never tell him the truth of what happened in his childhood."

"My mother sexually abused us up until the age of about 12, 14," Marcus told the camera. "And why would you want to give that?... If I just told you today that that happened in your childhood and you knew nothing about it, it would f**k the rest of your life up. Why would you feel it's necessary to give an emotionally disturbed 18-year-old information that he can't handle and is not necessary for him to know? If it was the other way around, I would expect him to do the same. I would want him to do the same. I'd be angry if he hadn't done it. And I do feel very passionately about that."

Marcus described how it felt for him to be carrying around that trauma himself. He later reflected: "I gave him [Alex] a present of not knowing any of that. That has to be a gift, has to be something precious that any human being would give to another one that they love."

For Marcus, the elaborate lie also allowed him a level of escape from the hurt that his mother had caused him. "Alex lost his memory by accident, and I lost my memory voluntarily... I was free, I could be rid of all the things she had done to me," he said. Marcus maintains that, to the best of his knowledge, his stepfather didn't know what his mother had been doing.

On reflection, Alex admitted that parts of the story Marcus had fed him didn't really tally up. He had been warned that their dad was a difficult man, with Marcus advising him to "always be polite" and "call him sir". The boys were also not permitted to have a key to their own house, even after their father had passed away, and as children were forced to sleep downstairs. Alex, having trust in Marcus and (through lack of memory) no other points of reference, he didn't scrutinise or question things too much.

Alex explained that he grew to love his mother and had become very close to her. He was upset when she passed away, telling the filmmakers: "I just cried for quite some time. But Marcus didn't."

This marked a turning point for the twins, and pinpoints the moment that things started to unravel – both in the story that Marcus had presented, and the relationship between the brothers.

"I felt nothing," Marcus described of his response to his mother's death. "I didn't feel any guilt for feeling nothing. I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel relieved, I just felt nothing." This was something that Alex couldn't understand.

After the funeral, the brothers started to clear out the family house. Alex said he found things that he thought were "strange" and that "shocked" him, but Marcus didn't offer any explanation. In the attic were years' worth of presents from their childhood that their parents had kept away from them. "It made my mother much more complicated," Alex said. "Who was this lady, what do I not know about her?"

He came across a secret compartment in the back of his mother's wardrobe. Once Alex found the key, he discovered a naked photograph of himself and Marcus, aged 10, and their heads had been cut off.

This pushed him to ask Marcus the direct question as to whether or not they had been abused by their mother. "He put his arm around me, and he said 'Yeah it's true' and then we cried. Both of us."

Along with bringing about the betrayal that Alex felt upon discovering that his twin had kept the truth from him, it also opened Pandora's box. Alex was left with questions that Marcus didn't want to answer, having repressed his own memories as a defence mechanism in order to cope.

The silence between them went on for decades.

The final scenes of Tell Me Who I Am capture the moments that the twins confronted their past together. Alex explained how the years of silence affected him, and Marcus detailed the horrendous levels of child abuse that they had each been exposed to as children.

It had started with their mother, but extended to her acquaintances when they were "passed around" and raped by other, unknown adults.

Alex and Marcus Lewis now: What do they think about the documentary?

The Lewis brothers initially shared their story in a 2013 article for The Times.

According to this piece, some scientists have claimed that it would have been impossible for Alex to have forgotten everything and everyone with the one exception of his brother. "Very little is known about the connections between identical twins," Marcus responded.

"We come from the same egg," he continued. "One's left brain and one's right, one's left-handed and one's right. We are mirror images of each other. The connection is so strong that you will do anything for the other half of you. It's not your sister or your brother, it's you."

The interview and book followed the revelation of the abuse (after Alex discovered the naked photo in their mother's room), but Marcus still refused to discuss any details of what had happened to them.

It is the final conversation caught by director Ed Perkins for Tell Me Who I Am which sees the pair discuss these harrowing events for the very first time.

"We've achieved closure beyond anything I could have imagined with each other by making this movie," Alex Lewis told Decider in a recent interview, ahead of the documentary's release. "That's an incredible gift the film has given us."

Discussing the potential reaction to the film, and how they plan to approach it with their children (currently aged between 9 and 13), Alex explained: "We've done this movie in conjunction with NAPAC, which is the National Association for People Abused in Childhood.

"They helped us through the reaction we're getting from the public and how to talk to our kids. They're gearing their websites up. They're getting ready for the movie. There's going to be a lot of people to help."

"We want it to be a conversation that's not taboo," Marcus told the publication. "Maybe you discuss this movie at a dinner party, and a friend tells you, 'You know, I was abused as a kid'. I think that would be an amazing thing. People shouldn’t be ashamed of what happened in their past, it’s not their fault."

"We had no idea of the enormity of what the movie could mean to other people," Alex added. "That’s going to be a very rewarding part of this journey for us."

The twin brothers also told the LA Times it took around 10 viewings of the documentary for them to "feel comfortable with it", but went on to described it as a love story between brothers, rather than a history of their child abuse.

Tell Me Who I Am filmmaker Ed Perkins said of the twins: "In everything they do, they steadfastly refuse to be victims. I think it’s amazing that this has not destroyed their lives.

"They live full, well-rounded and successful lives despite what they’ve gone through. And so even though the film inevitably goes to dark and complex places, we really hope that audiences are left with a feeling of hope."

Alex and Marcus's mother and other siblings: Who else was in the family?

Jill Dudley was born in 1931. She married twice and had four children; the twins, with her first husband John Lewis, and Oliver and Amanda with her second husband Jack Dudley.

She died in March 1995, five years after her second husband passed away. As previously mentioned, Alex struggled to understand his twin's emotionless reaction to their mother's death, but in fact he had been the only one of the brothers and sisters to cry.

Jill's backstory wasn't explored in very much detail in Tell Me Who I Am; a wise decision, in order to put the twins' story at the forefront and to give full emphasis to the trauma they had experienced.

In the Times article however, it is described that she appeared to have had "some kind of psychotic breakdown" after marrying John Lewis.

John died in a car crash a few weeks after Marcus and Alex were born, and she put them into care. It was Joanna Hodgkin, the co-author of their book, who found out that piece of information through family letters.

"She wasn’t depressed," Marcus said of his mother while talking to the publication, "she was out shagging, drinking and partying. I was very upset, she so callously abandoned us so she could get on with her lifestyle."

Tell Me Who I Am is available now on Netflix.

Rape Crisis England and Wales works towards the elimination of all forms of sexual violence and sexual misconduct. If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this story, you can access more information on their website or by calling the National Rape Crisis Helpline on 0808 802 9999. Rape Crisis Scotland’s helpline number is 08088 01 03 02.

Readers in the US are encouraged to contact RAINN, or the National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800-656-4673.