Home » Latest » Celebrity » Celebs You Didn’t Know Were Biracial

Celebs You Didn’t Know Were Biracial

5

37 0 Celebrity

6.5

SaveSavedRemoved 3

Five famous faces you’d never clock as biracial just from a magazine cover or a Spotify photo.

Nicki Swift’s rundown “Celebs You Didn’t Know Were Biracial” runs through a handful of household names whose mixed heritage rarely comes up in interviews, tabloid coverage, or even their own fan bases’ assumptions. The video moves fast — five names, five timestamps, five backstories that complicate the boxes people tend to put celebrities in. From a deadpan sitcom star to a 12-time Olympic medalist, the pattern is the same: public perception and private heritage don’t match.

• Aubrey Plaza (0:33) is the daughter of a Puerto Rican father and an Irish-American mother, and has said people have told her “But you’re white” despite growing up immersed in her father’s Puerto Rican family.
• Pete Wentz (1:15) is biracial through his mother, Dale Lewis, who is of Afro-Jamaican descent, while his father has German and English roots.
• J. Cole (1:54) was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to a Black American Army veteran father and a white German mother, Kay Cole, who raised him in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
• Ryan Lochte (2:30) and Halsey (3:19) round out the list — Lochte’s mother, Ileana “Ike” Lochte, was born in Cuba, and Halsey’s father, Chris Frangipane, is Black and Irish.

Aubrey Plaza’s Puerto Rican Side

Plaza built her career on the flattest deadpan in comedy, from Parks and Recreation‘s April Ludgate to a string of indie leads, and her light complexion has led plenty of people to assume she’s simply white. She’s pushed back on that repeatedly, pointing out that her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is Irish-American, and that she grew up culturally tied to her dad’s side of the family even as strangers questioned whether she counted. The disconnect between how she looks and how she was raised is exactly the gap the video is built around.

People have told Aubrey Plaza “But you’re white” — despite growing up immersed in her father’s Puerto Rican family.

Pete Wentz and the Fall Out Boy Assumption

Fall Out Boy’s bassist and co-founder is another name most fans wouldn’t flag as biracial. Wentz’s mother, Dale Lewis, is of Afro-Jamaican descent, while his father carries German and English ancestry — a combination that rarely surfaces in coverage of the band’s 2000s emo-pop run. It’s the same story that runs through several names on this list, a point covered in more depth in Musicians That Are Nothing Like They Seem.

J. Cole’s Frankfurt Beginnings

Cole’s origin story doesn’t match his North Carolina rap persona at first glance. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to a Black American father who served in the U.S. Army and a white German mother, Kay Cole, who moved the family to Fayetteville after his father left the picture. That German half of his background rarely comes up next to his Fayetteville roots, but it’s part of the same heritage that shaped his early years overseas before he became one of hip-hop’s most consistent chart presences.

Ryan Lochte’s Cuban Heritage

Lochte racked up 12 Olympic medals in the pool representing Team USA, but his background is split down the middle — an American father of English and German descent and a mother, Ileana “Ike” Lochte, who was born in Cuba. It’s a heritage that rarely gets mentioned alongside his medal count, buried under coverage of his races and, later, his off-pool controversies.

Halsey’s Dual Identity

Halsey, born Ashley Frangipane, has been the most vocal of the group about the gap between identity and perception. Her father, Chris Frangipane, is Black and Irish, and her mother, Nicole Frangipane, is white with Italian and Hungarian roots. Halsey has talked openly about identifying as biracial while acknowledging that she often passes as white in public — the same tension that runs through every name on this list, from Plaza’s Puerto Rican family to Cole’s German mother. For a look at how race and appearance collide elsewhere in celebrity culture, Celebrity Doppelgängers Who Look Freakishly Alike covers a different angle of the same “you don’t look like what I expected” phenomenon.

Five names, five timestamps, one throughline: Nicki Swift didn’t pick obscure figures for this list — Plaza, Wentz, Cole, Lochte, and Halsey are all still working, still touring, still releasing, and still getting asked to explain a heritage that was never hidden, just never asked about.