7 Pairs of Black Celebrities White Folks Have Mistaken For Each Other But Who Don't Look Alike At All

Sheree Whitfield/Sahara Davenport In 2012, Logo network's RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Sahara Davenport died of heart failure. When tvguide.com reported the news of the drag queen's death, it posted a photo of Bravo network's former Real Housewives of Atlanta star, Sheree Whitfield. The website confused Whitfield with the male reality star. According to reports, Whitfield had to ask TV Guide remove her photo from the website before they realized the mistake. Nelson Mandela/Morgan Freeman Last year, a public tribute to Nelson Mandela in India accidentally honored actor Morgan Freeman instead. When the former South African president died, the image of Freeman was mistakenly used on a billboard instead of the anti-apartheid revolutionary who died at age 95. Alfre Woodard/Idris Elba In November 2013, actress Alfre Woodard was the victim of an egregious error when Italian fashion house Armani captioned her as (Black male actor) Idris Elba in an Instagram post. The company didn't realize it had misidentified Woodard until it was advised by several frustrated fan posts on social media, as well as posted memes with #ArmaniCaptions. Laurence Fishburne/Samuel Jackson Many fans have had trouble distinguishing between actors Samuel Jackson and Laurence Fishburne. According to Jackson: “People shout at me, 'Hey, loved that The Matrix, man!' Yeah – me too. I was actually on a plane last year and this guy sat down next to me. Finally he said something to me, and we started talking about Pulp Fiction. He couldn’t remember the actor’s name, so I tried to help and said, 'I think it might have been Samuel Jackson.' He jumped in, 'No, no, it’s the other guy, that Fishburne guy.' We rode the whole flight having that conversation and then, right at the end, he looked hard at me and said, 'You sure look familiar, you’re sure you’re not Laurence Fishburne?' I said, 'No, and I definitely am not in Pulp Fiction either.'” Don Cheadle/Tim Meadows Actor Don Cheadle said he is constantly mistaken for fellow actor Tim Meadows. In 2009, when Cheadle sat down with TV host Craig Ferguson to plug his new movie Brooklyn’s Finest, he talked about being misidentified as Meadows, who is best known for his movie and television character, Leon Phelps, the ladies' man. Cheadle recalled when he was on a flight, the attendant put two bottles of the cognac Courvoisier on his seat - the drink that Meadows' character consistently enjoyed in the 2000 movie, The Ladies Man. Viola Davis/Octavia Spencer Last year at the Oscars, E! News mistook actress Octavia Spencer for fellow actress Viola Davis. At the event, while Spencer walked the carpet in a pale ochre, deep cream dress, E! showed her image on television above the caption, "Viola Davis." Q-tip/Tinie Tempah In May, rapper Q-Tip attended the Met Gala, an annual fundraising event for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City, when he was mistaken for British rapper Tinie Tempah by Vogue.com. The Queens native took a picture with singer Janelle Monae and former Vogue editor André Leon Talley, but he was later misidentified as Tempah on the Vogue website. Tip didn’t take the mistake lightly. He later tweeted about the blunder saying, “We all look alike,” and included a screenshot of the mislabeled photo and a link to Vogue's story.

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