Finding the funny in your roots. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most unexpectedly hilarious revelations and comments made on the genealogy documentary series “Finding Your Roots.”
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00:00Unmarried, illiterate.
00:04Wow, what a catch.
00:06Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks
00:10for the most unexpectedly hilarious revelations and comments made
00:14on the genealogy documentary series, Finding Your Roots.
00:18Guess what?
00:19What did he do?
00:20What did he do?
00:21What did he do?
00:22Number 10. Terry Gross.
00:25Since 1975, Terry Gross has held down one gig,
00:29hosting the NPR radio show Fresh Air.
00:32I fell in love with radio the moment I started doing it.
00:35It had everything I wanted.
00:37I was probably like 23 when I started.
00:40For someone who's nailed job security for decades,
00:43it was surprising to learn that one of her earliest positions was so brief.
00:47It was practically an internship.
00:49While discussing with host Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
00:52Gross revealed that soon after graduating college,
00:55she landed a job teaching eighth grade at a public school in Buffalo, New York.
01:00But that didn't last long.
01:02I got my BA in English with a teaching certificate.
01:05I was fired in six weeks.
01:06Her brief tenure was a result of her inability to keep a class in line.
01:10Perhaps if she had tried her famous interview voice on those kids,
01:13they would have straightened up.
01:15When you have the microphone and you're doing it for a cause,
01:19for your audience to learn something,
01:21it gives you the license to ask things you otherwise wouldn't ask.
01:24And so as a kind of shy person,
01:26it kind of opened up the doors to like put the shyness aside.
01:30Number nine, Richard Kind.
01:32Just how many rabbis were there?
01:34Was everybody a rabbi?
01:35No.
01:36No, being a rabbi was very special.
01:38It was special.
01:39When he appeared on Finding Your Roots in 2023,
01:42actor Richard Kind uncovered some wild surprises.
01:46Like learning one of his ancestors was murdered,
01:49supposedly over an insurance policy.
01:51He also discovered that many of his forebears were Jewish religious leaders
01:55who were responsible for educating their community.
01:58Naturally, this revelation left Kind feeling just a little smarter
02:02than when he first arrived.
02:04A feeling he humorously compared to a scene from The Wizard of Oz.
02:08It's like the Wizard of Oz giving the Tin Man a diploma.
02:12Oh, look at who's so smart.
02:14Although he did mix up one small detail.
02:17It was the scarecrow who got the diploma, not the Tin Man.
02:21But hey, who are we to argue with a doctor of thinkology?
02:24Wow.
02:25You were the most literate.
02:26You welcomed people into the world and you ushered them out.
02:30And it passed it on.
02:31Number eight, Audra McDonald.
02:33The hardships enslaved people endured during slavery
02:37are beyond anything we can imagine today.
02:39Have you thought much about your enslaved ancestors,
02:41what they must have gone through, what that must have been like?
02:44Oh, always.
02:46Just the resilience that they had to have had.
02:49In a 2021 episode of the show, Broadway icon Audra McDonald
02:54got the opportunity to reflect on her ancestors' harrowing experiences
02:58and admits that she wouldn't have survived what they went through.
03:02While the moment is emotionally heavy,
03:04host Henry Louis Gates Jr. lightened the mood with a quip.
03:08I tell myself I would have flung slavery.
03:10Got just a bit on there.
03:12Too hard.
03:13This got a big laugh out of McDonald,
03:15who jokingly replied with the grade
03:17such a brutal ordeal would have deserved.
03:20Still, her ancestors' resilience in the face of such atrocities
03:23left her feeling deeply inspired.
03:25Look what they did.
03:27Look at what they achieved.
03:31Sorry, that's what I think.
03:33Good for them.
03:34Number seven, Ava DuVernay.
03:37As a filmmaker, Ava DuVernay has always explored themes of race,
03:41faith, and family in her work.
03:43In 2017, she took things a step further
03:46by going on Finding Your Roots to trace her own family history.
03:50I think that we live in times that are very much defined by race.
03:53I think that we won't see change to that in our generation
03:57or even the generation right behind us.
04:00And so for me to be African American is very much part of my heartbeat.
04:05To her surprise, she discovered that her fourth great-grandfather
04:09was a white man born to slave owners in present-day Haiti.
04:13Henry Louis Gates Jr. couldn't resist pointing out
04:16the ironic twist between her films and her ancestry.
04:20Okay.
04:21There you go.
04:22Gotcha.
04:23That's right.
04:24The Queen of Black documentary film.
04:27You knew it was going to be there somewhere.
04:29I knew it was coming.
04:30Most of us know it's there somewhere,
04:32but we know where in your case.
04:33This revelation made DuVernay eager to dig deeper into her roots,
04:37so she took a DNA test, which showed that she was 57% African.
04:42Learning this brought her so much excitement,
04:45it left Gates laughing out loud.
04:51I'm black.
04:55I am black.
04:57Welcome back.
04:58Welcome back.
04:59Number six, Bill Hader.
05:01Discovering our family history often reveals surprising similarities
05:05with our ancestors.
05:06But sometimes it can also unearth some stark differences,
05:10like comedian Bill Hader found out.
05:12Bill, rather than run away...
05:14They ran to it.
05:15Okay, so never mind.
05:16He's not like me at all.
05:17I thought he was like, then AWOL.
05:18I was like, ah, there, there you go.
05:20While Hader is rather soft-spoken and very demure,
05:23his great-grandfather Arthur was anything but.
05:26The comedian learned that during World War I,
05:29Arthur didn't wait to be drafted.
05:31He voluntarily enlisted to fight,
05:34something Hader openly admits he would never do.
05:37Can you, in your wildest dreams, see yourself doing what he did?
05:41No.
05:43No.
05:44He was a man.
05:45So I'm a descendant of an actual, like, man.
05:48To top it off, after being stationed far from the action,
05:51Arthur longed for combat,
05:53and actually ran away to join the battlefield.
05:56Although Hader had nothing but respect for his ancestor's bravery,
06:00he was quick to acknowledge that he probably would have done the exact opposite.
06:04He's, man, I can't believe I'm related to him.
06:08I'm afraid to get on the freeway in L.A.
06:11Number five, Seth Meyers.
06:13A name says a lot about a person.
06:15It's like a bridge to the past,
06:17keeping the legacy of our ancestors alive.
06:20It's funny to think of how, I don't know,
06:23how much weight names have on people's outcomes.
06:27Because that's a lot of a name there.
06:30For comedian Seth Meyers,
06:32digging into his family history uncovered a surprising twist
06:35about the name he's carried all his life.
06:37It turns out that his great-grandfather, Morris,
06:40who immigrated to America from Lithuania at the age of 15,
06:44changed his surname, likely to fit in better.
06:47Trachiansky is the last name?
06:49You have just met your great-great-grandfather,
06:51and you have just retrieved your original family name.
06:54This means that there is an alternate universe out there
06:57where Seth Meyers is known by everyone as Seth Trachiansky.
07:01Admittedly, this name change would have given
07:04his late-night talk show a very different vibe.
07:07Late night with Seth Trachiansky.
07:09Yeah, I can see it now.
07:12Number four, Laura Linney.
07:14While some celebrities have uncovered tales
07:17of their heroic ancestors on this show,
07:19Laura Linney can't quite boast the same.
07:21Get ready for this.
07:23Oh!
07:26In a 2019 episode, Linney found out
07:29that her fifth great-grandfather, William,
07:31didn't exactly move to the U.S. to chase the American dream.
07:35Instead, he was convicted of receiving stolen goods
07:38and shipped to Virginia in 1768,
07:41back when the British liked to transport its convicts
07:44to colonial America.
07:46Felons transported from London to Virginia
07:49by the Neptune in January 1768.
07:52He is banished from England.
07:54He is being sent into exile.
07:56Linney greeted this revelation with such giddy excitement,
07:59bursting into laughter at her ancestor's misfortune.
08:02After all, there are worse crimes than being caught
08:05with a bunch of stolen iron hoops for pails, right?
08:08The justice said, Mr. Linney,
08:10you hear what the lad has said.
08:12Have you anything to say?
08:14Linney said, no, I own, I had the goods.
08:18I own, I had the goods.
08:20So we fest up.
08:21Number three, Paul Rudd.
08:23On Finding Your Roots, actor Paul Rudd discovered
08:26that his parents were connected in a way far deeper
08:28than he ever could have expected.
08:30They weren't just married, they were also related by blood.
08:33How did they meet and fall in love?
08:35Well, I think that they knew each other as they were kids
08:38because somewhere in the family tree,
08:40as you will probably tell me, they were related.
08:44Yup, Rudd's parents, Michael and Gloria,
08:46were second cousins, meaning that they shared
08:49the same great-grandparents.
08:51Upon learning this, Rudd couldn't help
08:53but throw in a joke about inbreeding
08:55and even wondered if that made his son his uncle.
08:58Which of course explains why I have six nipples.
09:01Absolutely.
09:02While this connection likely made family gatherings
09:05a bit more, well, interesting,
09:07at least his parents had a great response
09:09whenever someone asked, so how did you two meet?
09:12Is that, it's illegal now, right?
09:14It's legal, but it's unusual.
09:18Number two, Nathan Lane.
09:20According to host Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
09:23it's quite challenging to trace Irish ancestry
09:26due to the scarcity of surviving historical records.
09:30They were assisting them out.
09:32They were showing them the door.
09:35Oh, and it's just a nice way of saying it.
09:38However, the show managed to unearth a gem,
09:40a document that transported actor Nathan Lane,
09:43who is of Irish descent,
09:45back to a key moment in his family's history.
09:47Well, this is very exciting.
09:49It makes me want to have a party.
09:53A family gathering.
09:55It was a marriage record from the 1835 wedding
09:58of his great-great-grandparents.
10:00The document not only named Lane's ancestors,
10:03but also listed two male witnesses
10:05whom the actor hilariously remarked upon.
10:08Timothy and Peter Sullivan.
10:10They're gay neighbors.
10:14They had a lot of brunches.
10:16A lot of brunches in Clannanore.
10:19Of course, those 1835 brunches
10:22were undoubtedly much better than today's.
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10:411. Jimmy Kimmel
10:43Take a wild guess about who that might be.
10:46I'm hoping it's not Hitler.
10:48No, it's gotta be somebody we've done in the series.
10:50Oh, okay.
10:51You guys have not done Hitler?
10:52He's not been by the show?
10:53No.
10:54Many celebrities have discovered surprising family ties
10:57to other stars through finding your roots.
10:59So many, in fact,
11:00we actually made a separate list about that.
11:02But perhaps the most hilarious reaction
11:04came from comedian Jimmy Kimmel,
11:06who learned he is distant cousins
11:08with none other than
11:09the queen of all things domestic,
11:11Martha Stewart.
11:12You gotta be kidding me.
11:14This, by the way,
11:15this explains me.
11:16That's unbelievable.
11:18Kimmel found the revelation
11:19both shocking and oddly fitting,
11:21since, like Stewart,
11:23he also taps into the DIY lifestyle
11:25by making his own vinegar.
11:27But he even admits that the news
11:29may not be as thrilling for Stewart
11:31as it is for him.
11:32Either way,
11:33we can't wait for the inevitable cook-off
11:35between these long-lost cousins.
11:37Pumpkin pie is my favorite thing.
11:39It is?
11:40Oh, wow.
11:41It's 100%.
11:42I agree with you.
11:43I need somebody to turn me out
11:44and de-virginize me with a pumpkin pie.
11:46I would love to do that for you, Snoop.
11:47Have you made any unexpectedly hilarious revelations
11:50in your ancestral line?
11:52Share them with us in the comments below.
11:54Well, ain't there a skeleton in my closet, huh?
11:56Wow, I can hear him jingling.
11:58Do you agree with our picks?
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