Season eight of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is set to premiere in January 2022 on PBS.
The series will feature 21 guests in ten new episodes.
Among the guests are stars of the stage and screen Amy Carlson (Blue Bloods), Terry Crews (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Tony Danza, Raúl Esparza (Law & Order: SVU), Kathryn Hahn (Wandavision), Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Passing), Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo, Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton), and Melissa Villaseñor (Saturday Night Live); multi-hyphenates Pamela Adlon, Lena Waithe, and Regina King; filmmakers Lee Daniels (Empire, Precious) and Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, Lost); fashion legend André Leon Talley; journalist Erin Burnett; talk show and radio host Mario Lopez; restaurateur David Chang; and activists Brittany Packnett Cunningham and Anita Hill.
Host and executive producer Dr. Gates said, “Our guests – and their ancestors – embody what Finding Your Roots and the American Experience are all about. America is a nation of immigrants, willing and unwilling, but at the level of the genome, despite our apparent differences, we are 99 percent the same. Each of us is complicated in our own unique ways, but each of us descends from ancestors who have a story to tell and the goal of Finding Your Roots is to allow them, at long last, to tell those stories. At a time when our country has witnessed so much strife over the last year, it is so important to remind our fellow citizens of how much we share in common.”
Assembling the extensive family trees and ancestral narratives alongside Dr. Gates are DNA expert CeCe Moore (founder of The DNA Detective and host of ABC’s The Genetic Detective) and genealogists Nick Sheedy and Kimberly Morgan.
As a teaser, here’s the Season eight trailer.
