Season six of the PBS series, Finding Your Roots, begins October 8, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time and spans through to fall 2020.
There will be two new episodes this fall, followed by five encore presentations of the series.
In January 2020, the program will return with eight weeks of new episodes featuring both new guests and re-mixed thematic combinations of former participants’ stories. It will then return in fall 2020 with six additional new episodes showcasing new and re-mixed episodes.
Host and executive producer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., said that Finding Your Roots is “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 — and, in realizing this, to help us arrive at a deeper understanding of what it means to be part of the human family. 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.”
Assembling the family trees and family narratives alongside Dr. Gates are DNA expert CeCe Moore, founder, The DNA Detective, and expert genealogist Johni Cerny, founder, Lineages.
The season features 27 new guests.
2019 episodes
October 8, 2019: “Hollywood Royalty” with Isabella Rossellini, Anjelica Huston, Mia Farrow
October 15, 2019: “Off the Farm” with Melissa McCarthy, Eric Stonestreet
January 2020 episodes
“Secrets & Lies” with Sigourney Weaver, Amy Ryan, Justina Machado
“This Land is My Land” with Queen Latifah, Jeffrey Wright
“Beyond the Pale” with Terry Gross, Marc Maron, Jeff Goldblum
“Homecomings” with Sterling K. Brown, Jon Batiste, Sasheer Zamata
“DNA Pioneers” with Harold Varmus, Francis Collins, Shirley Jackson
“Slave Trade” with Questlove, S. Epatha Merkerson, Ava DuVernay
“Italian Roots” with Marisa Tomei, Jimmy Kimmel, John Turturro
“Criminal Mind” with Laura Linney, Lisa Ling, Soledad O’Brien
October 2020 episodes
“Fashion’s Roots” with Diane Von Furstenberg, Narciso Rodriguez, RuPaul
“Breaking the Silences” with Gayle King, Jordan Peele, Issa Rae
“DNA Mysteries” with Ann Curry, Téa Leoni, Joe Madison
“War Stories” with Kehinde Wiley, Julianne Moore, Bill Hader
“Flight” with Lupita Nyong’o, Lidia Bastianich, Scarlett Johannsson
“Coming to America” with Nancy Pelosi, Norah O’Donnell, Zac Posen