Actress on a Role
Unalakleet's Ariel Tweto parlays game show fame into TV project
by Van Williams
Growing up in Unalakleet, Ariel Tweto never imagined herself dancing with Wesley Snipes, dating Eddie Murphy's son or meeting Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
She never thought she'd be living in Los Angeles, playing basketball at famed Venice Beach and appearing on TV shows such as ABC's "Wipeout" and MTV's "Parental Control."
"I can't believe the people I get to meet and the places I get to go," Tweto says. "I'm like, ‘Am I dreaming?' "
It's no fantasy, though. Tweto has gone Hollywood.
The 21-year-old Inupiat is rubbing elbows with celebrities and making her name in the city of angels, although she still has an Alaska cell phone number to stay connected with family and friends back home.
"I talk to my parents and my sisters every day," Tweto says. "I keep in touch with all my cousins in Alaska. I have a good group of friends from college that keep me grounded. But it's not even like they have to keep me grounded because I haven't done anything yet."
That may change soon enough.
Tweto is working on a new TV show with a major network, although she couldn't go into specifics.
"I can say that it involves Alaska and my family," she says. "They haven't gone public yet, but we're working on a new show and I'm producing, too. It's exciting. I wish I could tell you more."
Even as a child, Tweto dreamed big. She left Unalakleet after her freshman year in high school and moved to Anchorage to pursue opportunities in basketball and beyond. She wound up at Emerson College in Boston, where she played college hoops for two years. Then she transferred to Chapman College in Orange County, Calif., where she ran cross-country. It was there that she discovered acting.
Break at the beach
You could say she got her big break on the basketball courts at Venice Beach, the same spot where the movie "White Men Can't Jump" was filmed. It was there that a producer from the show "Wipeout" noticed her and suggested she audition for the made-for-TV obstacle course.
"After getting filmed and goofing off in front of the camera I was like, ‘I love this.' It's fun watching yourself on TV," Tweto says. "I never thought I would do something like that."
The rest, as they say, is history.
Soon after that her phone didn't stop ringing with other opportunities. She did a little modeling. She did a little TV. She even did a show where she pretended to be the girlfriend of Eddie Murphy's son.
She also cut the rug with Wesley Snipes.
"We cleared the whole floor. It was just me and him dancing," Tweto says with an incredulous laugh. "When he asked me to dance I thought it was with everybody else, but he cleared the floor. And he was trying to bust out some swing dance moves and I was like, ‘Oh my God.' "
But no matter how Hollywood she goes, Tweto will never forget her Alaska roots.
"My family is super supportive," she says. "I get fan mail all the time and my mom reads it over the phone. Some of it really touching and some of it is really creepy, like, some old guy asking me to marry him. Or moms asking me to marry their sons, but we get a kick out of it every time. Some of it is little girls saying I'm inspiring them. I'm their role model. It's pretty awesome."
Van Williams can be reached at 907-348-2452 or 800-770-9830, ext. 452.