Latest in Finding Your Roots

House Speaker Paul Ryan participated in the upcoming 5th season of PBS’s Finding Your Roots and discovered he is 3% Ashkenazi Jewish “which about knocked his head off, to tell you the truth,” Henry Louis Gates Jr. gleefully told TV critics at TCA. Participants in the new season, launching January 8, also include…

When Larry David debuted his Bernie Sanders impersonation on Saturday Night Live, the similarities were uncanny. The Curb Your Enthusiasm star looked, talked and walked almost exactly like the Senator. David’s impression was so good that it was kind of scary. You didn’t know where David ended and Sanders began. When…

Ana Navarro's father thought she would learn she is descended from Spanish royalty when she participated in PBS's Finding Your Roots celebrity genealogy series, "so he's still recovering," she said, after learning some of her ancestors were slaved. Writer/TV host/activist Janet Mock called it "incredibly emotional" to…

This year was so polluted with TV industry controversy that, long before Donald Trump started calling TV reporters “scum" at rallies to adoring fans, and Madonna bolstered ex-hubby Sean Penn's $10M defamation suit against Empire co creator Lee Daniels, industry execs on both coasts could be seen with their hands…

When PBS unveiled its winter/spring primetime schedule today, it included a January 5 start date for the third season of Finding Your Roots, the celebrity-based genealogy series that came under fire after it was discovered exec producer/host Henry Louis Gates Jr. had removed reference to Ben Affleck’s slave-owning…

Downton Abbey will get its own float at the Rose Bowl Parade on January 1, to plug the PBS hit drama’s final season debut two nights later on January 3. PBS chief Paula Kerger, announcing the Season 6 kickoff stunt this morning at TCA, called it a “beautiful sendoff” but declined to give any more details except that…

PBS and WNET did a “good job” in their investigation about the censoring of the Ben Affleck episode of Finding Your Roots and made “sound recommendations” that send a “strong message” to all PBS program producers, PBS ombudsman Mike Getler says. But he’s not sure the steps taken will fix the basic problem brought to…

PBS has yanked the Ben Affleck episode of Finding Your Roots from all forms of distribution including on-air, digital platforms and home video, and has shelved scheduling of the third season until the production team implements staffing and other changes to “significantly enhance the ability of PBS and WETA to oversee…

PBS has informed member stations that, despite yesterday’s apology by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and executive producer Dyllan McGee, it is pressing ahead with its investigation into Finding Your Roots’ presentation of Ben Affleck’s family tree. In a statement issued after PBS and show producing station WNET announced they…

One day after Ben Affleck wrote on Facebook that he had lobbied PBS’ Finding Your Roots producer to withhold revealing he has a slave-owning ancestor, the actor took the high road and tweeted information about the relative: Lots of people have been asking who the guy was. His name was Benjamin Cole – lived in…

Caught in the cross hairs after the WikiLeaks release of hacked Sony documents described a back and forth over his ask to have excluded from the PBS show Finding Your Roots that an ancestor owned slaves, Ben Affleck has provided his own account of the matter on his Facebook page. PBS and New York’s WNET public…

Updated with Ben Affleck’s explanation: PBS and WNET have launched an investigation into Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s decision to censor his celebrity-genealogy series Finding Your Roots after getting a request from one of its “megastar” subjects. PBS and WNET’s announcement today coincides with a report from PBS ombudsman…