Joe Manganiello's fascination with his ancestry led him to quite the bombshell discovery about his family.
With a last name like Manganiello, the Magic Mike actor's Italian heritage came as no surprise to him, however a secret about his paternal grandfather's identity certainly did.
During an appearance Monday afternoon on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the Deal or No Deal Island host explained his quest for the truth about who his father's father really was.
As host Kelly Clarkson inquired about Joe's genealogy research, Joe shared that he had hired historians to explore his family tree, before revealing: "We found out that my father's father wasn't his father…"
After gasps from the American Idol alum and the audience, he continued: "The man who brought him up was not his father, which then just blew everyone's mind."
He went on to detail how he made his Ancestry.com profile public, and began writing to people that he thought might be connected.
Joe further revealed: "Someone came forward, actually an African American woman in a dashiki, and she said, 'I think we're third cousins,'" and noted he was able to confirm that it was true.
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The Pittsburgh-native previously uncovered details about his family history on the PBS genealogy show Finding Your Roots, which is hosted by Harvard academic Henry Louis Gates. He made an appearance on the show last year.
© InstagramIt was through that process that he learned that who he thought was his grandfather, Emilio Manganiello, wasn't. DNA testing revealed that his biological great-grandparents were in fact William Henry Cutler, a Black man, and Nellie Alton, who was white, and determined that his real grandfather was one of their three sons.
He also learned through the process the real reason for his German and Armenian ancestry: after his great-grandmother Terviz "Rose" Darakjian escaped the Armenian genocide, during which her husband and seven of her eight children were murdered, she was impregnanted by a German officer, Karl Wilhelm Beutinger, during her time at a refugee camp in Turkey. The officer later returned to Germany to his wife and three sons – one of whom went on to become a Nazi officer – and Joe confirmed during his appearance on Kelly's show that he definitely sees a resemblance between him and his German relative.
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