How a DNA test inspired actress-activist Kerry Washington's journey of self-discovery

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/ [login to see] /kerry-washington-thicker-than-water-memoir
In 2018, when actor/producer Kerry Washington had an opportunity to appear on the PBS series Finding Your Roots, her parents were initially excited for her. But then they learned the show would need to examine their DNA, Washington recalls, and that's when they sat down to tell her a secret they'd been keeping for decades.

"My parents shared with me that my dad — my beloved dad — is not my biological father," Washington says. "I was born from a sperm donor, at a time in the '70s where ... it was considered risky and important to remain secret."

Washington adds that she was a "very, very prayed for, wanted [and] loved child." Her parents had tried for years to conceive before her mother's doctor suggested artificial insemination. Following the procedure, Washington says, the doctor instructed her parents to go home and have sex so that her father would have "plausible deniability" about her parenthood.