Wentworth Miller is of African American, Jamaican, German, English, Russian, Dutch, French, Syrian, and Lebanese descent. In a 2004 interview with the Guardian in regards to the film Human Pressure (which follows the story of “a light-skinned African American man who decides to ‘go’ as white to facilitate a life and a profession that will in any other case be inaccessible to him in Forties America”), Miller stated:
“‘There have been quite a lot of issues I understood mechanically about this character. ‘Passing’ shouldn’t be one thing that has crossed my thoughts. Alternatively, being of blended race you do have this query of, ‘Nicely, perhaps I haven’t got to reply to any specific neighborhood, since I am probably not part of any specific neighborhood. Possibly I solely must reply to myself.’ It makes you a sort of racial lone ranger.”
In a 2017 interview with Interview Journal, Wentworth elaborated on rising up blended race and his identification, “To be trustworthy, it wasn’t one thing l took a really shut take a look at till I obtained to school, which I believe is what school is all about: self-examination and coping with these questions of ‘Who am I?'”
When requested if that self-examination precipitated him any nervousness, Miller answered, “If it did, it got here from the truth that different folks have been attempting to outline me and my very own journey. There’s a quote I usually seek advice from from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which is that ‘definitions belong to the definers and never the outlined.’ The gorgeous factor about having grown up in Brooklyn is, due to the wealthy cultural and racial variety there, nobody appeared to offer an excessive amount of thought to the place I match on the racial spectrum. However there have been instances once I would run up towards somebody who was concerned about determining what race was. That might come as a shock, and in some instances, like a slap within the face.”
He elaborated on how his identification performed into his appearing, “Nicely, the backstory to anybody of blended race is a lifetime spent being incorrectly perceived and selecting both to permit that misperception to proceed or to appropriate it, so I’m conscious of identification and race as being way more fluid, I believe, than somebody who’s ‘purely’ one factor or the opposite. And appearing does problem me to handle these specific points.”
