Finding Your Roots on PBS is quickly becoming a critical source of information that has connected celebrities like Pharrell, Questlove, Mario Lopez, and Edward Norton to their ancestry while revealing some surprising tidbits along the way. In an upcoming episode, actor Joe Manganiello has a thought-provoking conversation with the host, Henry Louis Gates, during which time the former co-star of Trueblood and Magic Mike learns that a portion of his family lineage can be attributed to the legacy of a brave Armenian woman named Terviz "Rose" Darakjian who survived the infamous genocide incident of 1915 after all seven of her siblings were murdered. He also learned that his family tree contained unsavory details, such as his connection to a great uncle who was a Nazi soldier in WWII.
"You have to take the good with the bad," Manganiello said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. "And there's some of that with history. I think there's a tendency to say, 'I'm so proud that my ancestors were on the right side of history,' but that's not you; that's somebody else."
As the introspective conversation progressed, Henry Louis Gates shared with Manganiello that he is 7% Sub-Saharan African and that his great-grandpa, Plato Turner, was an African-American man who fought in the Revolutionary War (he enlisted in the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment) to help secure the country's independence. Today, there is a monument honoring the legendary war veteran located in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
"Sub-Saharan African means that basically you're descended from slavery, as it pertains to the United States, and I didn't know that's what it meant until I was on the show," Manganiello explained, as he looked back on the episode during his Rolling Stone interview. "It's so rare to think that you'd have freed slaves fighting for the Colonies...You fight for the freedom and the promise that all men are created equal, and then a hundred years later there's the Civil War? To think of how backwards this whole thing went…."
The 46-year-old actor also learned that his grandparents, who were an interracial couple, overcame several barriers during a time when their relationship wasn't even legal nationwide.
"I'm descended from survivors," Manganiello said, noting that though the revelations of his family history are shocking, he feels like Finding Your Rootshanded him a pair of glasses after all these years. "All of a sudden I can see myself clearly for the first time."
Manganiello's episode of Finding Your Roots is scheduled to air on February 9th. Click here to watch the preview.
Source: EW Weekly
