It's time to wind out who these celebrities are. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most disturbing discoveries uncovered in celebs’ ancestry.
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00:00 If you look then again in 1888, the picture changes dramatically again.
00:04 Right.
00:04 Yeah, drunken disorderly on the public street, just over and over and over again.
00:08 Welcome to Miss Mojo, and today we're counting down our
00:11 picks for the most disturbing discoveries uncovered in celebs' ancestry.
00:15 Oh my god.
00:16 Number 10. Courtney Cox
00:23 Friends star Courtney Cox set out to trace her mother's English lineage.
00:27 She doesn't expect any spectacular revelations, so she's surprised to find royal roots,
00:32 including her 26-times great-grandfather, William the Conqueror.
00:36 So he's the reason why England is here? He conquered it from France.
00:40 Okay. This is pretty intense.
00:44 Another one of Cox's ancestors is her 18-times great-grandfather,
00:48 Thomas de Berkeley. The English Baron's Gloucestershire home of Berkeley Castle
00:53 served as a prison for the abdicated King Edward II in 1327.
00:58 So this is where Edward II was held prisoner for five and a half months.
01:04 This is also where he died, and while some accounts credit natural causes,
01:09 others believed he was killed.
01:11 They said late King was shut up in a closed chamber, but that not sufficing to hasten his death.
01:18 The historian shared the rumours detailing Edward's gruesome death,
01:22 though it's believed that he was ultimately murdered via suffocation.
01:26 In a sense, it was a crime against God as much as it was a crime against the King,
01:30 and it was a crime against the kingdom.
01:32 Berkeley and Cox's 19-times great-grandfather, Roger Mortimer, were put on trial.
01:37 The former was acquitted, while the latter was executed.
01:41 Okay. This is one of the greatest soap operas I've ever heard.
01:44 Number 9. Steve Buscemi
01:46 Like others on this list, actor-filmmaker Steve Buscemi's reason for digging into his genealogy
01:51 is his mother.
01:52 "Hi, how are you?"
01:54 "Good, how are you?"
01:55 "Okay."
01:55 The Brooklyn native never met his grandmother, Amanda Van Dyne,
01:59 because she took her life when his mother was very young.
02:01 "After my mother died, my sister had this made up."
02:04 "She had it made up because there were so few pictures of her."
02:06 "There's no pictures, yeah."
02:07 In his search, he found that his great-great-grandfather, Ralph Montgomery, had a rough go of it.
02:13 "Well, I was talking about going down dark roads, and this certainly seems like one."
02:18 By 1860, he switched professions from a dentist to a grocer. Based on a discarded letter,
02:24 this was also around the time he contemplated ending his own life.
02:27 "But then, months later, it's found. And not only found, but printed in the newspaper."
02:32 In 1861, he became a Union soldier in the Civil War, left his family, and later started a new one.
02:39 Though Montgomery ultimately died of tuberculosis in 1878,
02:43 Buscemi theorizes that generations of his family have suffered from depression.
02:48 "But when I think of the past generations, the things that they went through,
02:53 and that they survived, it really makes me so much more appreciative of my family."
03:01 8. Jason Sudeikis
03:05 SNL alum Jason Sudeikis set out to find the mysterious circumstances of his
03:10 paternal grandfather, Stanley, death in 1948.
03:14 "Don't know how, don't know where, don't know what happened,
03:17 or how that affected my gram, and obviously my dad."
03:21 He learned that Stanley married his wife Edna on September 25th, 1945,
03:26 abandoning her the same day, leaving behind his daughter and unborn son, Daniel, Jason's father.
03:33 He never supported them financially, and by 1947, they legally separated.
03:37 "So he never even met my dad?" "Not according to the court record."
03:41 "Up to this point?" "That's right."
03:42 "That's heavy duty."
03:43 Reading the fatal sidewalk accident report, Jason discovered that Stanley was unhoused
03:48 at the time of his death. His ex-wife and uncle's refusal to be involved
03:52 suggested that he may have burned too many bridges with his substance use.
03:56 "We contacted his wife, and we asked her to attend the inquest,
04:01 and she stated that she wanted nothing to do with it,
04:03 that she had been legally separated for three years."
04:07 Going back further, Stanley Sr. also abandoned his family. But the tragic irony is that
04:12 Stanley Sr's father Joseph died while working to provide for his family.
04:17 "I feel it is a form of closure, this journey to relay the information to my dad."
04:22 7. Marisa Tomei For Marisa Tomei, this foray into
04:26 genealogical research was intended to uncover the truth about her great-grandfather,
04:32 Francesco Leopoldo Bianchi's death in 1910.
04:36 "The story is that he was shot in a bar."
04:39 The family's story was that he was killed because of a misdeed,
04:42 possibly for having an affair or getting into financial trouble.
04:46 But as Tomei travels around Tuscany, she finds pieces that make up a different story.
04:51 In 1911, a man named Tarsilio Latzaretsky claimed he was attacked by Bianchi
04:57 and shot him in self-defence.
04:59 "Treacherously shot, Leopoldo Bianchi, killing him on the spot."
05:05 However, it was reported that the bullet entered the back of Bianchi's head,
05:09 despite evidence suggesting murder, Latzaretsky was acquitted of voluntary homicide.
05:14 "Self-defence, coming from behind."
05:19 The animosity between the men stemmed from a business deal gone wrong,
05:23 not to any philandering on Bianchi's part, as his family believed.
05:27 "And now I have much more of a connection to him. I can feel his presence, he's much more,
05:33 he's alive in my heart and in my mind's eye and in my family again."
05:39 6. Megan Mullally
05:41 Like fellow actress Marisa Tomei, Megan Mullally grew up hearing stories about her relatives.
05:47 "My grandfather, my father's father, he was an alcoholic."
05:53 Her grandfather was violent towards his sons,
05:55 behaviour that her father would later exhibit himself.
05:58 Because of his emotional and verbal mistreatment throughout her childhood,
06:01 Megan prepared to uncover some dark truths about her paternal ancestors.
06:05 "I still have certain questions on my father's side,
06:09 where the psychological and emotional darkness in my family comes from."
06:14 Through newspapers and court records, she finds that her great-great-grandfather,
06:18 Richard Ira Mullally, was charged and convicted of physically abusing his pregnant wife, Elizabeth,
06:24 in 1859. After his death, Elizabeth married her second husband, James Venable, with whom she
06:30 endured similar mistreatment. Even though Megan anticipated the outcome, she's still saddened to
06:36 learn about the troubling history of substance use disorders and violence involving the men
06:41 on her father's side. "That makes me really sad."
06:45 5. Chelsea Handler
06:47 Comedienne-author Chelsea Handler was raised Jewish, although her mother Rita was Mormon.
06:54 "My father, I guess, made a deal with my mother when they had children that they were going to
06:58 be raised Jewish." Rita was born in Germany and lived there until her father, Karl Stoker,
07:04 a German soldier in World War II, brought the family to the United States. The big mystery
07:09 was where Grandpa Karl's loyalties lay, and Handler dreaded he might have had ties to the Nazis.
07:14 "He was a Nazi enthusiast, and this is where my grandfather worked. So that makes my grandfather
07:20 what?" In Germany, she tried to gauge his enthusiasm through his military records,
07:27 which showed that he was drafted and seemingly lacked ambition to advance rank.
07:32 But one of the saddest parts of the episodes sees Handler reading her grandmother Elizabeth's
07:36 tragic account of life in post-World War I Germany. She details the grim conditions,
07:42 unemployment, extreme poverty, and scarcity of food.
07:46 "Oh yes, I can see my mother's head vividly when she bent her head over us,
07:49 her tears dropping onto our cheeks when we asked for a small piece of bread, saying, 'Children,
07:55 I don't have anything.'"
07:57 4. Jesse Tyler Ferguson
07:59 Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson comes from a line of "Jesse's,"
08:03 including his paternal grandmother, whom he was named after.
08:07 "The moment my grandmother passed away, you don't have that person to talk to,
08:11 to get those personal stories from."
08:12 She was named after her father, Jesse Wheat Uppercue, a lawyer who was also,
08:17 seemingly, a career criminal.
08:19 The first piece of information Ferguson finds on his great-grandfather is an article about
08:24 the 1872 death of Baltimore resident Amelia Wheat, Uppercue's elderly aunt.
08:30 "OK, well this got juicy really fast."
08:32 He was arrested as a murder suspect, but made it through two trials without a guilty verdict.
08:37 Throughout his life, JW moved around the country, getting into more trouble,
08:41 including two arrests, four embezzlement,
08:44 all while going through three marriages that all ended in divorce.
08:48 "Pull it together, Jesse, what happened?"
08:50 However, Ferguson's happy to hear that the otherwise disappointing relative
08:54 cared for his five children.
08:56 "When they divorced, he continued to take care of them as his own. I'm proud of him."
09:02 3. Christina Applegate
09:04 Growing up, Christina Applegate didn't know much, if anything, about her paternal grandparents.
09:09 Sadly, her father, Robert, didn't either.
09:12 "I want to know why my grandmother couldn't take care of him.
09:15 Not just because of her age, there has to be another reason."
09:20 He was raised by his grandparents and only knew of rumours about how and when his mother died.
09:25 On her genealogical journey, she finds that Lavina Shaw and Paul Applegate,
09:30 her grandparents, went through a tumultuous divorce and custody battle in the 1940s.
09:35 "Wait a minute, when did they first separate?"
09:37 "Well, do you want to take a look?"
09:38 During the legal proceedings, a doctor reported that young Robert appeared to be malnourished,
09:44 a discovery that visibly upsets Applegate.
09:47 "And on various dates, struck and beat her."
09:50 More shocking revelations are Paul's alleged mistreatment of Lavina,
09:54 as well as her struggles with chronic substance use, which likely contributed to her early death.
09:59 Though Robert is shocked to learn the details of his mother's life, he finally has some closure.
10:04 "And I hope, I really, really hope with all my heart,
10:07 that at the end of the process, he really sees what a miracle he is."
10:15 2. Regina King
10:17 Looking into her maternal ancestry, Regina King digs deeper into the life of her two-times-great
10:21 grandfather, Moses Crosby, aka Moses Hughes, an educator and civil rights activist.
10:29 "Using Moses' name, I then look for the family in Alabama,
10:32 since I know that's where Alice lived, and I locate them on the 1900 census."
10:37 While living in Alabama in 1868, an altercation with a white man got Moses' name added to the
10:43 local Ku Klux Klan's blacklist, making him a target in the white community.
10:48 "It gives permission for white men and women to attack at will those who are listed."
10:56 One night, a group of KKK members broke into Moses' home,
11:00 and though he escaped, his wife, Mary Meadow, was shot and killed.
11:04 "OK, let me stop."
11:06 Within days, he was charged with assault and attempted murder of the white man,
11:10 and received a two-year sentence.
11:13 "When we think about all of this, the context of who the jurors were,
11:17 and the fact that this sets the perfect scenario for Moses to be handed a judgment of guilty."
11:25 Moses endured many hardships, but King admires his perseverance
11:29 in the face of racism and injustices.
11:32 "Moses' entire story is very similar to stories that we're still hearing today."
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11:53 1. Lisa Kudrow
11:57 Since she was young, actress Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of Who Do You Think You Are?,
12:02 heard a tale of Belarusian Jewish family members devastating lives during the Holocaust.
12:08 "Most American Jews from Eastern Europe, you know, they have a Holocaust story.
12:12 There were relatives that were left behind."
12:14 In season one of the series, she travels to the site of the 1942 Ilya Massacre,
12:19 where 750 to 900 Jewish villagers were killed,
12:23 including her paternal great-grandmother, Mira Mordechiewicz.
12:27 "The local Christian population later told us that for many hours they could hear from afar the screams."
12:35 Kudrow knew about this horrific time in history,
12:38 and the tragic deaths of her ancestors and countless others.
12:41 "Thus ended Ilya, a Jewish community with centuries of a glorious history."
12:47 But being in Ilya, and reading about the detailed atrocities that were committed decades before,
12:55 she couldn't help but get emotional.
12:57 "You make people afraid enough of something completely manufactured,
13:04 and you can drive them to become murderers, cold-blooded murderers."
13:08 What reveal did you think was the darkest?
13:10 Have you uncovered anything shocking in your family's history?
13:13 Let us know in the comments below.
13:15 "So you take care of your own, and look out for your own."
13:18 Do you agree with our picks?
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13:27 [Music]