ROOTS

Joe Manganiello ‘Zero Percent’ Related to Any Manganiello, PBS Show Says

As it turns out, the ‘Magic Mike’ actor’s paternal grandfather isn’t who he believed it to be, but rather was a Black and mixed-race man.

The actor Joe Manganiello was surprised by what genetic researchers were able to uncover in an episode of Finding Your Roots, including the revelation that the man he believed to be his paternal grandfather was actually someone else entirely. “My grandfather was a Black man of mixed race,” Manganiello said, the Associated Press reported Thursday. “That was fascinating.” Digging deep into the Magic Mike star’s ancestry, the PBS show’s experts were able to uncover that his fifth great-grandfather was a freed slave, with the distant relative signing up with the Revolutionary-era Continental Army to fight against the British in a non-segregated unit. When the host of Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr., called him with the news prior to taping, Manganiello told a TV critics meeting on Thursday, “My family and I had a betting pool of what it is, like what’s so bad that you can’t announce it on the episode?” Gates informed him over the phone that Manganiello is “zero percent genetically related” to any Manganiello on the planet, according to the AP.