“I’m feeling connected. These are my people.”—Mia Farrow.

Mia Farrow, Angelica Huston and Isabella Rossellini share more than their chosen professions. They are the progeny of Hollywood royalty, and each lost one of their parents at a relatively young age. Farrow is the daughter of actress Maureen (Tarzan) O’Sullivan and Academy Award®-winning screenwriter/director John (Around the World in 80 Days) Farrow.

Academy Award®-winning screenwriter/director/actor John Huston’s storied filmography includes such classics as The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and Prizzi’s Honor. His dad Walter, Angelica Huston’s grandfather, received multiple Oscar nominations for various supporting actor roles and an Academy Award® for his performance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Oscars also went to son John Huston, the director and screenwriter of that film).

Isabella Rossellini’s mom, three-time Academy Award®-winning actress Ingrid Bergman, was an international film, stage and TV star of the first magnitude. Isabella’ dad, Roberto Rossellini, ushered in the age of neorealism as the writer/director/producer of such films as Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero.

While their immediate show biz families were often tabloid fodder throughout the 20th century, Farrow, Huston and Rossellini apparently knew little about their storied parents’ bloodlines and backstories.

FINDING YOUR ROOTS writer/producer/host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has surprises in store for actress Isabella Rossellini about her mom’s Swedish ancestors. Photo courtesy McGee Media.

Harvard professor and genealogical sleuth Henry Louis Gates, Jr., brings clarity and a few tears to the table as host of Hollywood Royalty, the Season Six opener of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., debuting on PBS tonight, Tuesday, October 8, 2019, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET. (Check listings for air dates and times and repeat broadcasts in your region.)

Gates sets the stage with snappily edited career bios of Mia Farrow, Angelica Huston and Isabella Rossellini and their parents and ends with their DNA reveal.  Although it’s clear that each of these women deserves her own, individual 50-minute Finding Your Roots episode, Hollywood Royalty opens the family floodgates for Mia Farrow, Angelica Huston and Isabella Rossellini.

Farrow, an Oscar nominee for Rosemary’s Baby, the star of TV’s iconic series, Peyton Place, and the romantic lead in highly publicized romantic liaisons with Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen, is deeply moved by shocking revelations about her paternal grandfather and grandmother.

Huston’s family tree threads back to the days of slavery in America with unsettling news about her distant great grandfather’s illegitimate children.

And Rossellini and her mom Ingrid’s nomadic lifestyles are hardly indicative of those of their Swedish forebears, who lived long, happy lives for generations without venturing far from one Swedish town.

With their DNA added to the mix of previous Finding Your Roots celebrities, Isabella Rossellini and especially Angelica Huston are shocked to find that they have some equally iconic cousins.

I finally bit the bullet and completed the DNA process to unearth my own roots via Ancestry.com and am currently digging my way through all of the preliminary results (not an easy task!). While it’s too soon to tell if George Washington, George Burns or Ken Burns are in the mix (amazingly, Ken Burns’s stint on a previous episode of Finding Your Roots revealed that he was related to Abraham Lincoln!), I believe that my DNA report enabled me to find the names and birth years of both sets of my paternal great great grandparents. This was a mind blowing discovery since my dad’s roots have been anecdotal at best. My dad and his brother were estranged from their father, so sadly I never met my grandfather, who was alive and well and living in nearby Pennsylvania for most of my childhood.

Writer/producer/host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reveals some painful truths about actress Angelica Huston’s ancestors in FINDING YOUR ROOTS on PBS. Photo courtesy McGee Media.

In the weeks ahead, 27 celebrities will sit across the table from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in new episodes of Finding Your Roots, as he unravels unknown highlights of their family trees culled from global research, as well as connections elicited via sophisticated DNA testing.  Gates is the perfect on-camera host for this enterprise. His enthusiasm for the task at hand is obviously rooted in the compelling historical, political and cultural timelines that drove his subjects’ forebears.

“It’s part of a larger mission to inspire us all to seek out the stories of our ancestors–to see history as something that we are all a part of, that we all have a stake in,” said Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Finding Your Roots.  “Our series strives to show how all Americans are related, despite our present divisive politics, at the most fundamental levels of all:  through our families, through our immigrant experiences, whether forced or voluntary, and at the level of the genome.”

Since I have always been a fan of Gates, as well as the Ancestry.com driven cable series produced by Lisa Kudrow, Who Do You Think You Are?, I will definitely continue watching these shows as I untangle the history of my own kith and kin.

Season Six of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., premieres on PBS tonight, Tuesday, October 8, 2019, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET. Upcoming episodes follow on Tuesday nights, on PBS, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET. (Check listings for air dates and times and repeat broadcasts in your region.)

In conjunction with the Finding Your Roots broadcasts, co-producer WETA promises to work with other PBS stations across the country to encourage viewers to share their family histories via #FindingYourRoots on Facebook and Twitter, @HenryLouisGates and  http://Facebook.com/FindingYourRootsPBS  and the series companion site http://pbs.org/FindingYourRoots   Happy Hunting!  –Judith Trojan