PBS’s Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates JR has announced their Season 11 guests, and it will start airing here in the USA on January 7, 2025.
There are 20 guests lined up (listed below), including a married couple, but what makes this season very unique is that for the very first time ever, Henry Louis Gates JR will be an actual guest on the genealogy show:
After years of uncovering the ancestral stories of our magnificent guests, I am thrilled to be able to share my own family history with you all next season. – Henry Louis Gates JR
Given how they’ve discovered distant relations between past guests, I’m looking forward to a revelation that Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, who are married to each other, will end up being distant cousins. It has to happen.
This season’s guests seems heavy on the actors and actresses, but it’s a very diverse cross-section of people, who have ancestors scattered around the globe, so should be very interesting.
The official guest list (American unless otherwise noted):
- José Andrés – a Spanish and American humanitarian, chef, and restaurateur, famous for founding the World Central Kitchen, a non-profit organization that helps bring food to areas affected by natural disaster or war.
- Joy Behar – Comedian, television host (The View), and actress, Daytime Emmy Award winer.
- Lonnie Bunch – Historian and educator, and is currently the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and is the first historian to have served as the head of the Smithsonian. Most of his career has been spent as a history museum administrator and curator.
- Kristen Bell – Actress best known for Veronica Mars, married to Dax Shepard
- Rubén Blades – Panamanian actor, singer, songwriter, actor, musician, activist, and politician, considered one of the most successful artists in the history of Latin music, with 12 Grammy awards and 11 Latin Grammy awards
- Rita Dove – Poet and essayist, who served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in the 1990s, awarded the Pulitzer Price for Poetry.
- Laurence Fishburne – Actor (best known for the Matrix movies), three-time Emmy Award and Tony Award winner
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr – Historian, literary critic, professor, Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and the host of Finding Your Roots. If you’re reading this, you probably have heard of him.
- Michael Imperioli – Actor, Emmy Award winner (The Sopranos)
- Melanie Lynskey – New Zealand actress, known for her command of American accents, Emmy Award nominee.
- Debra Messing – Actress, with seven Golden Globe and five Primetime Emmy Award nominations (winning once, for Will & Grace).
- Natalie Morales – Journalist and co-host/moderator of CBS’s The Talk, worked at NBC News for 22 years prior to that.
- Sheryl Lee Ralph – Actress and singer, Tony Award nominee, Primetime Emmy Award winner for Abbott Elementary. Has spoken about her ancestry in the past (after taking a DNA test).
- Lea Salonga – Filipino singer and actress, with a Tony Ward and A Laurence Olivier Award, plus two nominations for a Grammy Award. She is a Disney Legend.
- Amanda Seyfried – Actress, singer, songwriter, nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe, winner of a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy.
- Dax Shepard – Actor, comedian, filmmaker, podcaster, husband of Kristen Bell.
- Sean Sherman – Oglala Lakota Sioux Chef, cookbook author, promoter of indigenous cuisine. Awarded the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook (2018). Grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
- Sharon Stone – Actress, painter, former model, winner of a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Academy Award nominee.
- Amy Tan – Author best known for novel, The Joy Luck Club, with numerous awards.
- Chrissy Teigen – Model and television personality, cookbook author.
For more information, keep an eye on the official PBS website: https://www.pbs.org/show/finding-your-roots/