Sheila Kuehl
Kuehl was born Sheila Ann Kuehl in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her father, Arthur, was an airplane construction worker at Douglas Aircraft. He was Catholic and her mother, Lillian, was Jewish. As a child actress she performed under the stage name Sheila James.
Kuoth Wiel
Wiel was born in a refugee camp in Itang, Ethopia, the daughter of united Nations relief workers. She spent her early life moving between Nasir in South Sudan, where her father was a doctor, and Gambela in Ethiopia. Her father died when she was five. Wiel and her mother immigrated to the United States in 1998, when she was about eight years old, and settled in Faribault, Minnesota.