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Lisa Kudrow

TV shows mine celebrities' ancestry for big reveals

Mark Lieberman
USATODAY
Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Anderson Cooper's ancestor owned 12 slaves. Sally Field is related to the man who founded Massachusetts. Cynthia Nixon's great-great-great grandmother killed her husband with an ax.

Revelations like these are the focus of Finding Your Roots on PBS and Who Do You Think You Are? on TLC. With the help of Ancestry.com, both shows invite celebrities to uncover their past through a combination of historical analysis and scientific inquiry.

These shows arrived in the United States in 2006, when Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., executive producer of Finding Your Roots, woke up in the middle of the night with an idea that became his PBS series African-American Lives, which premiered that year, and led to the first season of Finding Your Roots in 2012. The second season premieres Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. ET/PT (times may vary).

"Our show invented the genre of tracing genealogy and doing DNA," Gates says.

Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of Who Do You Think You Are? (Wednesday, 9 ET/PT) came to the trend later, after glimpsing an episode of the U.K. original while vacationing in Ireland. She decided to bring the show to the USA with the help of the original's creator, Alex Graham.

"The networks here at the time thought, 'A historical documentary? No way are audiences going to watch that,' " Kudrow says. "Somehow we talked NBC into it."

The show has since migrated to TLC after NBC canceled it in 2012, when it received its first Emmy nomination for outstanding reality program. It was nominated again this year.

To recruit celebrities, Gates sends letters to people he admires, such as Tina Fey and Stephen King. Kudrow initially tapped her friends and colleagues, but now celebrities come to her with requests to be on the show. This season's remaining subjects include Kelsey Grammer (Wednesday) and Minnie Driver (Aug. 27).

Tina Fey and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"Now that it's been in the air and people trust that it's not a reality show exposé, they want to do it," Kudrow says. "We don't usually get people doing this show because they want publicity."

The process is similar for both shows: The celebrity provides initial information, researchers interview relatives and details are gradually revealed. Who Do You Think You Are? primarily relies on historians and storytellers, while Finding Your Roots emphasizes scientific research, as well.

No celebrity has halted the process in the middle, even when the revelations are less than flattering. On the contrary, Gates says some celebrities shoo their managers away when they try to intervene in the middle of a session.

"You don't inherit the foibles and guilt of your ancestors," Gates says. "No one should be afraid to open that book."

Some stories resonate more than others. Kudrow loved watching Rob Lowe discover that he is descended from a German soldier for the British in the American Revolution. Gates was moved to discover that actor Courtney B. Vance's grandmother lived around the corner from the (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Masters of Sex) TV star's childhood foster home in Michigan while he lived there.

"There's emotional impact for the person going through it," Kudrow says. "These moments of history that we weren't taught have direct influence on our families."

Gates, who says he admires Kudrow, believes these two shows can co-exist because Who Do You Think You Are? is about the globe-trotting quest for information, while Finding Your Roots focuses on putting stories in historical and social context. Both Kudrow and Gates believe the format is here to stay, and Gates is even working with other scholars on developing a curriculum for inner-city students to teach them about the importance of ancestry studies.

"As long as there are guests willing to be in the series, there will always be fresh stories to tell," Gates says. "As long as we do our job accurately, no one will get tired of it."

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