His family tree is filled with epic drama

Joe Manganiello’s fictional world has been filled with epic adventures. He’s played superheroes and spent years (in “True Blood”) as a werewolf, surrounded by vampires.
But his familiy’s real-life stories can almost match that. They include a heroic great-grandmother.
“If you’re Armenian, you’re descended from some form of survivor,” Manganiello (shown here) told the Television Critics Association. “So I just heard all these stories growing up.”
Then he linked with “Finding Your Roots,” to learn the specifics. The results – along with those of former football star Tony Gonzalez – will be shown at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 7) on PBS, before the State of the Union address in most places and after it on the West Coast.
Manganiello is known for his leading-man torso (displayed in two “Magic Mike” movies) and visage, but wasn’t sure where that came from. His maternal side is Armenian, the same as the Kardashians, Cher and others; his surname is Italian, the same as many Hollywood stars.
But DNA research brought a surprise, said Henry Louis Gates, the show’s creator and host: “The man his father called his father was not.”
In short, Manganiello has no biological link to the man he thought was his grandfather … or to anyone else with that surname. “Joe’s biological grandfather was actually a (mixed-race) Black man and Joe is 7 percent Sub-Saharan African,” Gates said. Seven generations before him was Plato Turner, “one of 5,000 Black men … in the Continental Army.”
Still, that story pales in comparison to his maternal great-grandmother’s.
During World War I, Turkish soldiers and others are estimated to have killed more than a million people of Armenian descent. Studying that, Gates said, is “a challenge, because the Turkish government never acknowledged the Armenian genocide (and) doesn’t permit researchers access to vital records.”
But Manganiello had heard the basic story, passed down from his great-grandmother. Turkish soldiers, careful to save bullets, had used one shot apiece to shoot her, her husband and seven of their children, leaving the eight to starve in the crib.
“She had the presence of mind to lay on the ground and pretend that she was dead. (Then) she took a piece of clothing from each of the children and strapped the eight child on her back and then swam across the Euphrates river …. When she got to he other side, the baby on her back had drowned.”
Picked up by friendly soldiers, she recovered. She was also impregnated – no one knows if it was consensual – by a German soldier.
The challenge was to learn who that was. Gates’ team used DNA to find him.
“Seeing a picture of him with his wife and three children back in Germany after the war … was a really profound moment for me,” Manganiello said. Also jolting was the news that one of those children became a Nazi, becoming a part of the next war’s genocide.
The show’s guidelines say nothing can be revealed in advance, unless it’s a revelation that might cause the person to drop out. So Gates told Manganiello that his grandfather wasn’t biologically related to him, but waited for filming to tell the rest.
“We were able to out Joe as a ‘brother,’” Gates joked. “Sorry, Joe. Welcome to the hood, brother.”