Let's get to the root of the drama. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most intense, drama-filled reactions and reveals on PBS’ “Finding Your Roots.”
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00:00Your family treats trips with drama.
00:02Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well maybe that's where I inherited and wanted to be, you know.
00:06Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most intense,
00:11drama-filled reactions and reveals on PBS's Finding Your Roots.
00:16Like, I'm not overacting, I'm not, uh, uh, yeah, I'm at a loss for words.
00:27Number 10. Viola Davis.
00:30We like stories that are going to elevate us.
00:32Right.
00:33You know, um, we're not so good with messy truth.
00:38No.
00:39And, uh, this is a messy truth.
00:42On Finding Your Roots, award-winning actress Viola Davis learned the messy truth of her
00:48maternal lineage.
00:49While researching documents about Davis' grandfather, Henry Logan, they found a discrepancy
00:55that revealed a long-held secret.
00:58In the early 1940s, Gable Logan was listed as Henry's father on his social security application.
01:04However, after Henry passed away in 1979, his obituary stated he was the son of a man
01:10named John Young.
01:11Did your mom ever talk about this?
01:13Never.
01:14Hmm, isn't that interesting?
01:16That silence?
01:17Silence is always interesting to me.
01:19According to DNA analysis, Henry's biological father was indeed Young, a nearby neighbor
01:25of Corinne in South Carolina.
01:27Davis didn't appear too shocked by the inference that her grandfather was born from an extramarital
01:32affair.
01:33However, she had some very poignant words of wisdom about ancestry.
01:37It makes me know that I entered this world with a big old load from the moment I came
01:43out of my mother's womb.
01:44Right.
01:45I'm the amalgamation of a lot of stories and a lot of secrets.
01:51Number nine, Pamela Adlon.
01:53In 2022, actress, writer, and director Pamela Adlon appeared on Finding Your Roots to solve
01:59a decades-long family mystery about her mom, Marina.
02:02I want to know, and I don't want to disrespect my lineage, but I really, I'm so curious.
02:12It was always rumored that Marina wasn't the biological daughter of Leonard Glees,
02:16the only father she'd ever known.
02:19Researching Adlon's genealogy was a multiple-year process, but DNA results were finally able
02:25to determine that the rumor was true.
02:27Marina's birth father was actually a man named Joseph Walthou.
02:32Wow, I'm so happy that I get to do this to my mom.
02:37Adlon's grandmother, Phyllis, was already married to Leonard when Marina was conceived.
02:42Researchers also discovered she had a half-sister named Gloria, Walthou's other daughter.
02:48The truth may be scandalous, but in the end, it brought families together.
02:52Your mother's got a sister, and she's alive and well, and she's 83 years old.
02:57My mother's gonna be so happy.
02:59Number eight, RuPaul.
03:01In season six, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells RuPaul Charles the compelling story
03:07of his maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Julie, who was owned by a man named Jacques Fontenette.
03:15Interestingly, he freed her two children, Nanette and Andre, but kept Julie herself enslaved.
03:22RuPaul and Gates speculate on the reason for this act of compassion,
03:26theorizing that he could have been their father.
03:28Love?
03:29Love would be the number one thing that someone would grant someone their freedom like this.
03:35But he didn't love Julie enough to free her, too.
03:37Right. Yeah.
03:39Researchers discovered a record of manumission from 1818, stating that Andre bought his mother from Fontenette.
03:46After his tragic death, Nanette succeeded in freeing her,
03:50roughly 14 years after she and Andre were granted manumission.
03:55Very easily, people could fade away.
03:59It's too much.
04:00Too much.
04:01Too much.
04:02And he didn't quite get to the finish line, but his sister.
04:06But his sister did.
04:07Picked it up.
04:08And he made sure of that.
04:09Wow.
04:10RuPaul can relate to the sibling's determination,
04:12and tearfully recalls how he felt caring for his own mother before she passed away.
04:17I've done a lot of things in life.
04:19That turnaround of helping my mother like that has to be the most incredible thing I've ever done.
04:30Number 7. LL Cool J
04:33That's heavy.
04:35I mean, you know, you couldn't have told me in a thousand years and a million years that this was the case in my life.
04:44The early life of James Todd Smith, also known as LL Cool J, was scarred by his violent father.
04:51After the couple separated, LL and his mother, Andrea Griffith, went to live with her parents,
04:57Eugene Griffith and Ellen Hightower.
05:00But finding your roots made a life-changing discovery.
05:03Griffiths were not LL's biological grandparents.
05:06It's a little devastating to know that, you know, that guy that raised me, that was so kind to me, wasn't my blood.
05:15Andrea was born Andra Jolly to parents Ethel Mae Jolly and Nathaniel Christie Lewis,
05:21and later adopted by Eugene and Ellen.
05:24It's a lot to process, especially since she never knew she was an adoptee.
05:28However, LL still has love and respect for the people who had a hand in raising him.
05:33I respect Eugene Griffith. I respect Ellen Hightower Griffith.
05:37They did so well for us.
05:40I have more love and respect for them than I ever did.
05:47Ever.
05:48Number 6. Terry Crews
05:50Like many participants in Finding Your Roots, Terry Crews goes on an emotional rollercoaster
05:56learning about the triumphs and tragedies of his ancestors.
06:00Man, this is a movie. This is a movie.
06:03It's true.
06:04Oh, it is.
06:05And it's your story.
06:06This is a movie. Think about this.
06:08The multi-hyphenate entertainer learned that he likely inherited his ambitious nature
06:12from his maternal great-great-grandfather, Edward Albert.
06:16The men also share a similar resilience as Crews' four-times great-grandparents,
06:21George and Fannie Newsom.
06:23George was enslaved by a planter named Hezekiah Newsom
06:26while his wife and kids were at a nearby property.
06:29In 1858, Fannie was separated from five of their seven children.
06:34This is just in one day, one action.
06:36Can you imagine having your family separated and the generations all...
06:41And you, one day you saw your mom and the next day she was gone forever.
06:45She's gone, man.
06:46I can't imagine.
06:47Four years after a partial reunion in 1861,
06:51all nine family members were finally together again.
06:54As a father of five, Crews felt a strong connection with his relatives
06:58and was deeply touched by their harrowing experience.
07:01I cannot imagine any of my babies being yanked and pulled out of my arms
07:09and taken away into someone else's household.
07:13I would never know where they went.
07:15Number five, LeVar Burton.
07:18I'm ecstatic.
07:20I can't even explain how it feels to get this information.
07:26It's like there have been pieces of me that have been missing.
07:32After his breakout role in the 1977 miniseries, Roots,
07:36LeVar Burton was the host and executive producer
07:38of PBS's beloved educational series, Reading Rainbow,
07:42which ran from 1983 to 2006.
07:46He's long been an advocate for literacy
07:48and always attributed it to his mother,
07:50Irma Jean Christian, a schoolteacher.
07:53But on Finding Your Roots,
07:54he discovered that his paternal relatives
07:56were also passionate about education.
07:59You come from educators on both sides.
08:04That's very cool.
08:07I'm very proud of that.
08:08Estranged from his father since he was 11,
08:11Burton had no idea that his grandfather
08:13and great-grandfather both worked as school superintendents
08:17and the latter was instrumental in founding
08:19and running a school in Osceola, Arkansas
08:22for African-American children.
08:24LeVar Burton was amazed that he had this powerful connection
08:27to his father's family for all this time.
08:30This is gonna perverberate for a while.
08:33Of course.
08:34Forever.
08:35So powerful.
08:36Number four, Eliza Schlesinger.
08:39Finding Your Roots helped actor-comedian Eliza Schlesinger
08:42dig into her Eastern European paternal origins.
08:45She learned that her great-grandmother, Esther Zonic,
08:48managed to make her way from Poland to New York in 1921.
08:52However, she left behind five siblings.
08:55I know that feeling when your sibling's in danger
08:57and you feel helpless,
08:58especially from like an ocean away.
09:02So I can't begin to imagine this.
09:06I don't think I want to.
09:08In September 1939, Mława, the small Polish town
09:12where Esther's brother Lipa worked,
09:14was invaded by German soldiers,
09:16and its Jewish residents were confined to a walled-in ghetto.
09:20In November 1942, Lipa, along with many others,
09:24was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp,
09:27where he died less than a year later.
09:29The fact that there was even a doctor,
09:31because you're murdered.
09:32Right.
09:33Your heart didn't degenerate.
09:34Of course it didn't degenerate,
09:35because you were starved.
09:37Sure, of course.
09:38You were murdered.
09:39I can't believe these monsters even wrote it down,
09:41but because they're psychotic, they wrote everything down.
09:43Schlesinger felt proud that Esther immigrated
09:46to the United States on her own,
09:48but hearing about her close connection
09:50to the horrors of the Holocaust was a painful realization.
09:53It was already so real,
09:58and so now it's palpable.
10:03Number three, Mandy Patinkin.
10:06I worry for the world.
10:09The unthinkable happened.
10:11On Finding Your Roots,
10:13actor Mandy Patinkin traced the ancestry
10:16of his paternal grandfather, Max,
10:18and great-uncle David Patinka,
10:20who came to America.
10:22David ultimately returned to Europe,
10:24where he, his wife, and two of their five children
10:27were killed during a robbery.
10:29In 1939, his son, Chaim,
10:32traveled to New York while Chaim's brother, Lazor,
10:35remained in the northeastern Polish town of Bronsk,
10:39where the Germans confined them to a ghetto in 1941.
10:43Lazor would have been about 29 years old.
10:45His wife, Bluma, would have been about 25,
10:47and their son, David, would have just been a few months old.
10:50They had relatives in America,
10:52but now they were trapped.
10:54On November 2nd, 1942,
10:57over 2,000 Jewish residents,
10:59including Lazor and his family,
11:01were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp.
11:04Just days later, they died in gas chambers,
11:07and their bodies were disposed of in a crematorium.
11:10Just like Eliza Schlesinger,
11:12hearing what his relatives endured in the Holocaust
11:15was heart-wrenching and overwhelming for Patinka.
11:18I was never given this information.
11:21This is... I don't have words.
11:27That's unbelievable.
11:31That's unreal.
11:33Number two, Pharrell Williams.
11:35I don't want to cry,
11:37and I'm trying not to be angry.
11:40You're not a machine.
11:42This is horrendous.
11:44What else can you feel? It's horrible.
11:48It's intense, sir. It's intense.
11:51Learning about the hardships and atrocities
11:54your ancestors faced is never easy.
11:56On Finding Your Roots,
11:58Pharrell Williams had the opportunity
12:00to read a first-hand account
12:02written by his great-great-great aunt,
12:04Jane Arrington,
12:05who was enslaved on a cotton plantation.
12:07Sometimes I swept the yards after working all day.
12:13There was a task of cotton to be picked
12:17and spun by them.
12:20What kind of people?
12:22As a part of the Slave Narratives Project of the 1930s,
12:25Arrington detailed the indignities
12:27her family suffered day to day.
12:29Reading her words and envisioning
12:31the painful reality of their lives
12:33had a visible effect on Williams.
12:35Despite the emotional experience,
12:37he was grateful to gain this intimate knowledge
12:39of his ancestors.
12:40And I thank God that I got to hear it
12:44when I'm so sorry they went through this.
12:47Nobody should have gone through this.
12:51It's a lot, man.
12:52I have to say I am forever changed.
12:55Before we unveil our top pick,
12:57here are a few honorable mentions.
12:59Issa Rae.
13:00The actress-producer discovered
13:02some relationships were a bit complicated.
13:04Your fourth grade grandfather was a white man.
13:08This is so...
13:10It's like he just took me through a soap opera.
13:13Like a slave soap opera.
13:16John Lewis.
13:17Civil rights activism runs in the family.
13:20So maybe, just maybe, it's part of my DNA.
13:26My bloodline or whatever you want to call it.
13:29Larry David.
13:30The comedian learns his mother's real name.
13:33I cannot believe that I didn't know her real name.
13:37That's astounding.
13:38Yeah.
13:39Yeah.
13:40Fred Armisen.
13:41The SNL alum can't believe his true identity.
13:45You understand that I tell people
13:47that I have interviews where I say I'm a quarter Japanese.
13:51Because you thought you were a quarter Japanese,
13:53but genetically you're a quarter Korean.
13:55Why hasn't anyone told me this?
13:57Questlove.
13:58The Roots drummer's ancestors came to the U.S.
14:01on the last known slave ship.
14:03Until an hour ago...
14:08I didn't know who I was.
14:15I said I wasn't going to cry then.
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14:34Number 1.
14:35Joe Manganiello.
14:36I feel like a time traveler.
14:39This is something out of some science fiction novel
14:43that I gave a small part of me,
14:49ran it through this computer,
14:52and it said step in.
14:53For some shocking discoveries,
14:55host Henry Louis Gates Jr. respectfully informs the guest off-camera
15:00prior to proceeding with the episode,
15:02which was the case with actor Joe Manganiello.
15:05He learned the mind-blowing truth
15:07that DNA showed he wasn't biologically related
15:10to his paternal grandfather.
15:12Instead, his father's father was a light-skinned African-American man
15:16with the last name Cutler.
15:18That means, Joe Cutler,
15:22that you would, under the one-drop rule, be an African-American.
15:26Boy, now that's, uh, that's really interesting.
15:30Manganiello knew the harrowing story of his maternal great-grandmother,
15:34Terviz Rose Durakjan,
15:36an Armenian genocide survivor who had a half-German daughter,
15:39Sandra, his grandmother.
15:41The show revealed her father to be a soldier named Carl Wilhelm Butinger,
15:46whose son went on to join the Nazis SS.
15:49Learning this wealth of information had such a profound impact on Manganiello
15:53that he continued tracing his genealogy after the show.
15:57For me to be sitting here today,
15:59like, it's like threading a needle with a bow and arrow at a hundred yards.
16:04It's true.
16:05Three times.
16:06It's true. It is true.
16:07It's impossible.
16:09Which of these moments did you find the most dramatic?
16:12Let us know in the comments.
16:14My job is to imagine.
16:17That is my profession.
16:19I have never been able to get a hold of that.