2 hours ago
1
January 22, 2026 — 11:00am
Identical twins Vikki and Helena Moursellas, 37, were finalists on My Kitchen Rules in 2014, achieving fame with their clementine and clove semolina cake. They’ve since written three cookbooks together.
Vikki: Growing up, Mum always said, “Helena is the one we cared for extra”. She was born with Wolff-Parkinson-White [a condition that causes a very fast heartbeat]. In my head, that meant Helena was the precious one. I was seen as the strong one.
The crazy thing is, Helena’s the boss. When our dad passed away from a heart attack we were 12 and she just took over that role – not running the house but deciding everything she and I were going to do.
Our mum and our yiayia overprotected us: it’s just the Greek way. We grew up scared: “Who’s in that car?”; “What’s that under the bed?” One day, at primary school, we had to carry the lunch-order basket to the canteen and we were so terrified, we ran and fell over. Our grazed knees were covered in blood.
Twins have a lot of power because you get a lot of attention. And we were inseparable. I remember our best friend, Angela, saying, “Can you guys just include me, please?” because Helena and I always walked in front, glued to each other. We still do this with people: with Mum, with my husband, Luke. It’s really not intentional.
We always wanted to be famous. As kids, we watched TV soaps and read TV Week magazine. Helena found a note we wrote aged nine that said, “I want to walk a red carpet one day”. It still amazes me that years later there were two TV Week covers with our faces on them.
We got lucky with My Kitchen Rules. Contestants get put into personality categories – the “mean girls” or whatever. We were just us: two 25-year-old Greek identical twins. MKR was amazing; afterwards was hard. For two or three years there were social events and people paying you money to do photo shoots and cooking demonstrations. Then it stopped. That’s reality TV: it’s not real.
I struggled more than Helena. I’d enjoyed the fame and the photo shoots, but she was more, “I don’t need it”. She got into cheffing [at Sydney diners 4Fourteen in Surry Hills and Fred’s in Paddington] and I began doing food prep for magazines and cookbooks. Helena says it saved her. Kitchen culture has changed but, 10 years ago, some of the men she worked with were often verbally abusive. Their behaviour was disgusting. But she thrived; she needed that structure.
When I started dating Luke in 2014, Helena was pretty jealous: she just felt that she was losing me. I had a really hard fertility journey – we had to do IVF – and Helena supported me throughout, told me everything was going to be OK. It must’ve been exhausting for her. I have my two-year-old daughter, Billie, now. It’s been a hard adjustment for Helena, not being my No. 1 anymore, but she’s wanted her independence for a long time.
Helena’s been in London for a year working as a photo chef and food stylist for publications and developing content for her social media. I’ve missed her. She has a great job opportunity there this year as a recipe developer and I’m happy for her. We still talk every day on the phone for about three hours. Luke says it’s not healthy; it isn’t healthy.
Growing up, we never felt smart enough to go and do big things, but MKR gave us a taste of success. I wish I could tell those two young girls sitting on the couch back then reading TV Week, “You’re going to be on MKR, you’re going to publish three cookbooks [their latest is Opa! Recipes inspired by Greek Tavernas], and you’re going to be on The Morning Show”.
Helena: If you’re not a twin, it’s hard to explain the connection we have. I came out second, but there was no separation of identities between Vikki and me. Mum dressed us the same until we were eight. We shared a bedroom until we were 16. Whatever my life has been has been Vikki’s as well.
Our childhood’s a bit of a blur now. I pretty much followed her around as a kid but, when we lost Dad, I became head of the household a little bit. It was like going from 12 to 18 in an instant. Suddenly, I was everybody’s rock. We became quite scared of losing Mum.
I suffered from anxiety as a kid. Mum and Dad split a couple of times and then got back together. When Dad died, it was really tough watching our mum go through something so difficult. We had a lot of support, but Vikki was the one who was always there to comfort me.
Going to the UK in 2024 was important for me: it was a bit of an escape. Mum didn’t need me and Vikki has Billie and Luke now. Before Vikki had Billie, I was No. 1. It’s different now. At the start, it was weird. I’d think, “She should be calling me”, but that wore off quite quickly. We don’t talk as much as we used to and I’m OK with that now. Parenting doesn’t sound easy. I don’t want children; I’ll be the fun aunty. She went through quite a tough time with fertility issues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone hold themselves together like Vikki did over those years.
We have quite a lot of weird twin moments. A few years ago, I woke up in my apartment at 4am thinking she was next to me. I was yelling out her name. The next morning, I said to her, “I had the weirdest night.” She’s like, “Me, too. I woke up at four o’clock and I turned over and I thought Luke was you.” It was just freaky.
Vikki says I’m the boss, but she is, really. She’s quite stern. I’m all over the place, but Vikki likes things to be in order. She handles all the boring things that need to be done on time and she’s really good at not catastrophising. I’m the opposite. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. I’ll Google symptoms and diagnose myself and Vikki’s like, “Stop it. Pull yourself out of it now.”
When MKR finished, we went from one extreme to the other and I suppose we bickered quite a bit. We were always like, “What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?” but, actually, I didn’t want to continue doing any of it. I’d broken up with my ex, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and working in the kitchens of two busy restaurants for five years was my coping mechanism. Vikki rang me every day, though, to check I’d got home safe and was eating healthily.
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.
