WATERTOWN, NY (December 30, 2024) – In the new season of the Emmy® nominated series FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., – premiering on WPBS-TV Tuesdays at 8:00 pm, starting January 7, 2025 – nineteen celebrity guests will sit down with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to dive into their ancestral history and solve mysteries that have plagued their families. In addition to the all-star line-up, Gates will have his own familial mystery solved when the tables are turned and the celebrated host becomes a guest on an eagerly anticipated episode of the new season.
Over the course of ten new episodes, Gates and his team use genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis to trace the family trees of twenty compelling guests, telling stories that illuminate America’s fundamental diversity. Season 11 episode guest pairings will be:
January 7 – “Larger Than Life” Actors Lea Salonga (“Mulan”) and Amanda Seyfried (“The Dropout”)
January 14 – “La Famiglia” Talk show host Joy Behar and actor Michael Imperioli (“The White Lotus”)
January 21 – “Stranger Than Fiction” Novelist Amy Tan and poet Rita Dove
January 28 – “Dreamers One and All” Actor Sharon Stone (“Basic Instinct”) and model Chrissy Teigen
February 4 – “Family Recipes” Celebrity chefs José Andrés and Sean Sherman
February 11 – “Latin Roots” Musician Rubén Blades and journalist Natalie Morales
February 18 – “The Ties That Bind” Actors Kristen Bell (“The Good Place”) and Dax Shepard (“Parenthood”)
February 25 – “The Butterfly Effect” Actors Debra Messing (”Will & Grace”) and Melanie Lynskey (“Yellowjackets”)
April 1 – “Moving on Up” Historian Lonnie Bunch and actor Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”)
April 8 – “Finding My Roots” Actor Laurence Fishburne (“The Matrix”) and host and executive producer Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
As the pages turn in each guest’s book of life, emotional revelations give way to complex questions about identity. Through Gates’ discerning touch, his guests learn what every family history shares—love, courage, and sacrifice—and how our histories transcend borders, merging to form an American root system fortified by its diversity. Along the way, viewers are transported from coastal Africa to the Mississippi Delta; from shtetls in the former Russian Empire to the ancestral lands of the Lakota Nation; from villages in the Philippines to a pirate enclave in Puerto Rico—all in search of the stories that will bring our guests’ ancestors to life. What’s more, this new season also includes a special reveal: the solution to a mystery that has haunted Gates’ own family for generations.
At the center of it all, guiding every discovery, is host, writer and executive producer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University.
“Our ancestors’ genetic legacies cascade down the branches of our family trees informing who we are,” said Gates. “As FINDING YOUR ROOTS enters its eleventh season, the team and I cherish deeply the bond we have with our guests and viewers to explore the history we have in common through personal stories of those who have shaped our world, one generation to the next. It’s a special honor to have our home on PBS, and we can’t wait to share this season’s amazing slate of guests with our audience.”
Assembling the extensive family trees and ancestral narratives alongside Dr. Gates are DNA expert CeCe Moore (chief genetic genealogist for Parabon Nanolabs and host of ABC’s THE GENETIC DETECTIVE) and genealogists Nick Sheedy, Kimberly N. Morgan, and Akosua Moore, who together have solved hundreds of mysteries and reconnected innumerable lost relatives over the past two decades.
The public can explore and share their family histories via social media using the hashtag #FindingYourRoots on Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, via Facebook.com/FindingYourRootsPBS and @HenryLouisGates, and on the series companion site, pbs.org/FindingYourRoots.
FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Season 11 is a production of McGee Media, Inkwell Media, and Kunhardt Films, in association with WETA Washington, D.C.. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the writer, host, and executive producer. Dyllan McGee and Peter Kunhardt are executive producers. Sabin Streeter is the senior producer. Natalia Warchol is the series producer. Deborah Clancy Porfido is the supervising producer. Kevin Burke is the producer. Robert L. Yacyshyn and Leslie Brown are line producers. Sam Hartley is the coordinating producer. Sabin Streeter and Krista Whetstone are directors.
Corporate support for Season 11 of FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. is provided by Gilead Sciences, Inc., Ancestry® and Johnson & Johnson. Major support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support is also provided by Ford Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Candace King Weir; the Inkwell Society; and by public television viewers.
About WPBS
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