Celebs You'd Never Guess Knew Each Other In College

We're used to Hollywood's celebs being friends with each other, supporting one another, and congregating pretty much only with other famous people. It makes sense that you'd want to hang out with someone who understands what it's like to be famous, someone who can relate. We're also used to stars keeping their pre-fame friends close as they skyrocket to superstardom; it's probably nice to have someone around who "knew you when." HBO made a whole show about that, after all.

Less common are celebs who knew each other before they were both famous, stars who knew each other when they were students and then both happened to make it big. College is a time to figure out who you are, to stretch your wings after leaving the nest and learn what it is you want to do with your life, and it's also a time to find your people. For aspiring actors, that can mean befriending other aspiring actors. Sometimes the stars stay close, and fans are surprised to learn their relationship goes back to the days of all-night study sessions and weekend frat parties. Other times, they get famous in two totally different industries, and it's wild to consider that they've ever been in the same room, let alone knew each other when they were younger. Read on to learn about celebs you'd never guess knew each other in college.

As "Riverdale" fans know, Jughead romances Betty, while her best friend Veronica gets with Jughead's BFF Archie. Despite all the spooky relationship drama on the show, Jughead and Veronica haven't spent much time together, just the two of them, as Fansided notes. Turns out the actors have a past behind-the-scenes connection, though — even if it's more distant than Camila Mendes, who plays Veronica, would have liked. 

Mendes went to NYU at the same time as Cole Sprouse and his twin brother Dylan. The two were already uber-famous from their years spent at the Tipton Hotel on "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody," and a pre-fame Mendes kept an eye out for the stars around campus. "I saw [Cole] around, and there was a time when we had class in the same building, so I would always see him outside. He was a weirdo!" she told Office magazine. She explained that she occasionally talked to Dylan at parties, but that Cole was the shy twin, so they never really spoke much. "Cole always laughs when I tell him that," Mendes said, "because I remember meeting him on certain occasions and he doesn't. I'm always like, 'Fine! Whatever! Sorry I'm not a child star!'"

They've been close ever since their "Riverdale" audition, about which Mendes told Nylon, "We bonded over the fact that we both sweat a lot before auditions." Sounds like this friendship was destined to be!

A recording of John Mulaney and Nick Kroll's Broadway show, "Oh, Hello on Broadway" was released on Netflix in 2017, but the quirky play was far from the first time the pair have worked together. In fact, they met long before Mulaney appeared on "The Nick Kroll Show" or "Big Mouth." They were both students at Georgetown University. 

"I was doing improv comedy in an improv group called The Georgetown Players Improv Group," Mulaney told CBS News. He recalled the name of the director of the group: Nick Kroll. Kroll was a senior who cast Mulaney after seeing his audition. "I just immediately was like, 'Wow, this kid is funny,'" Kroll told NPR. The encounter meant a lot to John Mulaney, even years later. "Had I not met Nick that day," he mused to CBS News, "[my life] really would have been a different path."

Both comedians view that day as an influential one in their later career paths. "We just clicked and immediately enjoyed working together," Kroll said. They have gone on to collaborate many times, and their friendship is so well-known that the Bronx Zoo named two of its "hissing cockroaches" after the pair, they revealed to Conan O'Brien. 

Longtime fans of "SNL" breakout star Bowen Yang know of his years-long creative partnership with "Las Culturistas" co-host Matt Rogers, best known on screen as the host of HBO Max series "Haute Dog." Yang appeared on Rogers' ill-fated Quibi series Gayme Show (quickly-departed Quibi's fault it was ill-fated, not the show's). The two were tapped to star in the Hulu film "Fire Island." Fans may not realize that their friendship stretches back even farther than their time in musical sketch comedy group Pop Roulette; the two actually met at NYU!

When Yang and Rogers appeared on NPR's "Ask Me Another," they revealed the origin story of their friendship. Initially, Rogers explained, they lived on the same floor but didn't like one another because of girl drama. "This is when we were both closeted," Rogers groaned. "Our whole freshman year, we were kind of very wary of each other." Once they did come out and were openly gay by their sophomore year, Yang said, their friends wanted them to link up. They resisted, not wanting to play into stereotypes that gay people must be friends only because they're gay.

Then, at a Halloween party: "We discovered from across the party that we both knew all the words to Nicki Minaj's 'Super Bass,'" Rogers said. Yang clarified that, at that time, the song was still "just a bonus track." The rest, as they say, is Barb history.

"Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met on the first day of college 35 years ago," Tommy Lee Jones said at the Democratic National Convention in 2000 (via C-SPAN), giving the speech that served as Gore's official nomination for the presidency. "He is a good, caring, loving man." 

The two met at Harvard and quickly became inseparable. They initially lived across the hall and then moved in together, according to the Harvard Crimson. "There was this funny little dynamic going, as if Tommy Lee was the occasion for Al to assert his [Southern] roots," a friend recalled to The Washington Post. 

At the DNC, Jones regaled the crowd with tales of what Gore was like to live with. "We shot pool, and we watched 'Star Trek' when maybe we should have been studying for exams." He said that one year they had Thanksgiving in their dorm, just the two of them, roasting a turkey in the fireplace in their room. "I know from Tipper that that has been some of the most ambitious cooking that Albert has done since then," he joked.

For his part, Gore told the Harvard Crimson in a statement that Jones is "a great guy and a wonderful, lifelong friend." Gore would ultimately lose the presidency to George W. Bush, never (to date) moving into the Oval Office; he has that in common with his actor friend, who has never played a president on screen.

Actor Woody Harrelson has lived a life of "extreme hedonism," he joked with Jimmy Kimmel, which the actor said required him to put religion "on hold." In his younger days, however, Harrelson attended Hanover College in Indiana on a Presbyterian scholarship, and he thought he might someday like to be a minister. Future Vice President Mike Pence attended Hanover at the same time, and the two knew one another. "I actually quite liked him," Harrelson told Kimmel. "I thought he was a pretty good guy. He's very religious, very committed."

Harrelson expanded on their relationship when he appeared on WTF with Marc Maron. "I did a [sermon] when I was at Hanover College," he said, "and in fact, this is kind of bizarre, but Mike Pence was two years older at the same school...  He was the guy who kind of led me through it ... mentored me through it." Surprised, Maron asked if Pence was as "frightening" at the time as the host viewed him years later. "No, not at all. We weren't buddies or anything, but he was very religious." He explained that Pence was head of the student club for those who might be interested in the ministry.

"Seeing as how I'm not quite in that ballpark now," Harrelson said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "I don't know how we'd get along, 'cause I think he's still quite religious."

Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance weren't the only future celebs who met because one showed the other around Yale; future "Us" co-stars Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke were first introduced to each other the same exact way. On Showtime's "Desus & Mero," Nyong'o explained that she encountered Duke when he was still a prospective student, in New Haven, Connecticut, for his callback audition for the School of Drama. "I was assigned to Winston to show him around campus," she said.

"She and I became really close because we shared that immigrant experience," Duke told Esquire. "We shared the idea of having really big dreams knowing that we'd left our own country."

Their friendship was one of destiny on several levels; in addition to leading the Jordan Peele horror movie as spouses, Nyong'o and Duke also co-starred in Marvel's "Black Panther" (alongside fellow Yale alum Angela Bassett!). The young friends even went and saw the original "The Avengers" team-up together while in New Haven, Nyong'o revealed on "Desus & Mero." "We were dreaming together about, 'Oh, wouldn't it be nice to be in one of those,'" she said.

"We would always tell ourselves that they're going to [put a Black Marvel superhero on screen] someday, but we could never tell who," Duke said to Esquire. Turns out the missing ingredient they couldn't visualize was each other.

Brooke Shields' memoir "There Was A Little Girl" is a touching account of her lifelong relationship with her controversial mother, Teri, who was roundly criticized in the press for allowing her daughter to model and act at a young age. In the book, Shields includes a section about her college boyfriend, a Princeton football star by the name of Dean Cain. "...we were instantly crazy about each other," she writes. "We were a golden couple and everybody loved us together." She says they shared the same sense of humor and that Cain — who would grow up to be Superman in "Lois & Clark" — was not intimidated by the fact that she was already famous.

She also describes the night she lost her virginity to Cain, writing that the experience was "beautiful" and "what you would wish for your daughter." Unfortunately, she was wracked with guilt and shame afterwards, signifying "the beginning of the end" for their relationship.

Cain confirmed to Meredith Viera that Shields asked him for permission to write about the experience in her book. "We're still great friends," he said. "What I said to her was, 'I trust you implicitly, and anything you're gonna write, I'm sure is gonna be honest and straightforward.'" He said they were in love and they were college sweethearts and that he isn't ashamed of anything that happened, so, "Write away."