- 2 months ago
Some family trees are stranger than fiction. Join us as we explore celebrities who uncovered eerie, inspiring, and downright uncanny connections between their own lives and those of their ancestors. From surprise distant cousins to life stories that seem to repeat across generations, these star-powered revelations prove history has a funny way of coming full circle. What coincidence shocked you the most?
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00:07Welcome to Ms. Mojo.
00:09And today, we're looking at celebrities who learned that their stories have an eerie parallel to the stories of their
00:15ancestors.
00:17Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
00:23Won't you be my cousin, Tom Hanks?
00:25It always seemed like destiny for Tom Hanks to play fellow beloved screen icon Fred Rogers.
00:31Then, Access Hollywood blindsided him at the New York premiere of the 2019 biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
00:37Their research showed that Hanks' ancestor Jacob Mefford served alongside his brother William in the American Revolution.
00:44No, you're pulling our leg.
00:46Alright.
00:46Let's look at this.
00:47How far away is it?
00:48Wait, look at a Mefford.
00:50I know, yeah, a Mefford.
00:51You are six cousins with Fred Rogers.
00:53Look, Ernest Hanks.
00:54The bloodline William sired would yield a certain children's TV host.
00:58Hanks was stunned to discover that he just played his own distant cousin.
01:02This is crazy.
01:03Did you have any idea?
01:05Well, I would like to see if Johnny Depp is related to Fred Rogers.
01:08Can you find out from Ancestry.com?
01:11It's less surprising that both men are American heroes by heritage.
01:15And with Hanks' son Colin playing Rogers in a drunk history skit,
01:18maybe we should give casting directors more credit for spotting family resemblances.
01:22Well, what do you do when you're mad?
01:25Do you want to punch a wall?
01:27Do you want to rip your mama's hair out?
01:29Do you want to kick your kid sister in the face?
01:32Well, how about you just sing this precious little song instead?
01:38Modern family, for the time.
01:41Sarah Hyland.
01:42Oftentimes, art unintentionally imitates life.
01:45On a 2023 episode of the Ancestry web series Two Lies and a Leaf,
01:50Sarah Hyland is informed that her great-grandmother, Leona Hawkins,
01:53was a hat maker and party girl.
01:55Sadie Hawkins dance?
01:57Who?
01:57Leona Hawkins dance.
01:58That's what it should have been.
01:59I say I have twins.
02:00The answer is B.
02:03She loved to party.
02:06It wasn't enough that this sounded like Haley Dunphy,
02:08the troublemaking fashionista Hyland played on Modern Family.
02:12Leona's sister Lucy was a physician and entrepreneur,
02:15as academic as Haley's sister Alex.
02:18Her sister, Lucy Hawkins, your great-great-grand aunt,
02:22was a doctor, which was very rare for women at the time.
02:26And this ad here is for Dr. Lucy Hawkins advertising her wellness center.
02:31It looks like this contrast of personalities between sisters wasn't so farcical after all.
02:36Host Jackie Tone actually pointing out a, quote,
02:38real-life Haley and Alex nonetheless had Hyland tickled.
02:42I like that.
02:43That's super cool.
02:44A smarty girl and a party girl.
02:46A real-life Haley and Alex.
02:48Yeah, I guess so.
02:49Youngstown, Ed O'Neill.
02:51It's a small world, no matter how worldly a family gets in a century.
02:55Actor Ed O'Neill was eager to dig into his Irish roots in a 2024 episode of Finding Your Roots.
03:01It was right down the street.
03:02That's cold.
03:03Yeah, it was.
03:05So he never, he was very insecure about that.
03:10And so when he had the kids, it was like...
03:13That's his family.
03:14That was it, yeah.
03:15He was surprised to learn that his ancestors first settled in Youngstown, Ohio,
03:20the very place where he was born and raised.
03:22They were also fleeing the Great Famine of the 19th century
03:25and lived hard in the early days of the coal mining town.
03:28Did you know that?
03:29No.
03:29That you had coal in your blood?
03:31No.
03:31What do you imagine that was like, Ed?
03:34I've never been in those mines.
03:36I would never want to go...
03:38I don't know what they look like.
03:38I don't want to go down underneath the ground.
03:40And you thought Al Bundy had a rough life.
03:43Certainly O'Neill gained a greater appreciation for family
03:46after he learned what his went through to get him from Ohio to Hollywood.
03:49So that was sort of what I thought...
03:51Absolutely.
03:52...was a big part of her job.
03:53Yeah.
03:54It would be.
03:54It was holding people's hands who were staring into the terror of death.
03:59Oh, my God.
04:01That's incredible.
04:02A glorious heritage, Matthew Broderick.
04:04So, Charlotte, that's his wife?
04:07Correct.
04:08She's 22, which works out properly because it was 42 in the other one?
04:12That's right.
04:15He's my great-great-grandfather.
04:17Audiences gained a new respect for Matthew Broderick
04:20after he starred in the 1989 Civil War epic, Glory.
04:23And he gained a new respect for the subject
04:25after his 2011 appearance on the American version of Who Do You Think You Are?
04:30This was how he discovered that his great-great-grandfather,
04:33Robert Martindale,
04:34served as a New England regiment in the American Civil War.
04:37It would have been quick.
04:39Yes.
04:40It probably would have been painless.
04:44And if you were going to get it,
04:47that's the way you wanted to happen.
04:49It's not the wildest coincidence that Broderick played Colonel Robert Shaw of Massachusetts.
04:54As common as that name and service in that war were,
04:57the actor was still moved by Martindale's courage
04:59and the idea that he could have brought it to the screen.
05:02I should have thought of it, but I never did.
05:05The character I played in Glory was from a New England regiment as well,
05:09and his name was Robert...
05:11Robert Shaw.
05:12We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
05:15Judi Dench.
05:17Yes, why do I know that?
05:19You might...
05:19You might know it's...
05:21Better...
05:22You might know the English name better.
05:25As the Nor.
05:26In 1957, Judi Dench made her professional acting debut as Ophelia
05:30in an Old Vic Company production of Hamlet.
05:33It turns out this Danish noblewoman was a role she was born to play.
05:37Visiting the royal estate of Kruenberg for a 2021 episode of Who Do You Think You Are,
05:41the British dame learned that she comes from Danish nobility as far back as the 16th century.
05:46So we know that she took up the position of Mistress of the Robes
05:51or Chief Lady-in-Wating in 1584, and that she was with Queen Sophie for eight years.
05:57They were welcomed in the castle, which would inspire Elsinore in Shakespeare's legendary play.
06:02Having always wanted to visit Kruenberg, Dench was deeply moved by this introduction.
06:06Does that remind you of anything?
06:08It seems, madam, it is.
06:12It's practically a lie from Hamlet.
06:15Perhaps the Lady-in-Wating and her family would be moved to know
06:18that her descendant moved up to the role of Queen Gertrude in 1989.
06:23A Hexed Lineage
06:24Sarah Jessica Parker
06:25Innocent people were put on trial for the supposed crime of witchcraft
06:29and put to death.
06:32I really cannot express enough how shocked I am at the turn this story has taken.
06:37Audiences were bewitched by the immortal Sarah Sanderson
06:40in the 1993 cult comedy Hocus Pocus.
06:42While preparing for the sequel almost 30 years later,
06:45actress Sarah Jessica Parker learned on Who Do You Think You Are
06:48that she's really linked to the Salem Witch Trials.
06:52Ancestor Esther Elwell of Gloucester, Massachusetts,
06:55was charged with witchcraft over a woman's mysterious illness and death.
06:58To find out if my ancestors were involved in the witch trials,
07:02I've come to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
07:05I'm looking for Samuel and Esther's names in the court records of 1692.
07:09Parker was just glad to be related to an accused witch instead of an accuser.
07:13Thankfully, the witch trials were banned just in time for Elwell to avoid execution.
07:18Not to make accusations,
07:19but we'd like to know if she bore a suspicious resemblance to Parker.
07:23I just want to go on record as saying I find this really actually physically upsetting.
07:29It's really horrible, so...
07:31A Canadian dynasty, Justin Bieber.
07:34Maybe it's valid that singer Justin Bieber was once considered the face of Canadian pop culture.
07:39And that's not just because of the good looks.
07:44In 2019, an Ancestry.com test linked his French immigrant roots to Maturin Roy and Marguerite Biri.
07:52They'd never know the impact that their lineage would have on the culture they settled in.
07:56Bieber is a distant cousin to fellow singer Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne,
08:01and actor Ryan Gosling.
08:02Maybe, yeah, maybe I would say Justin because he's Canadian and he's cute.
08:10Bieber posted his findings on Instagram, on which he described as, quote,
08:13the best day of his life.
08:15Let's trust that it was topped by him adding another branch to a star-studded family tree in 2024.
08:25A royal role, Benedict Cumberbatch.
08:28It's an honor for any actor to play the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III.
08:32For the great Benedict Cumberbatch, his BAFTA-nominated performance on the show The Hollow Crown was more like fate.
08:38Are they now upon the western shore, safe-conducting the rebels from their ships?
08:43Oh, my good lord, my friends are in the north.
08:45Cold friends to me!
08:47What do they in the north when they should serve their sovereign in the west?
08:50They have not been commanded, mighty king.
08:52He had just been cast in 2015,
08:54when historian Kevin Shurer found evidence that Cumberbatch is a distant cousin of the real Richard III.
09:00Granted, the king's siblings have millions of descendants in England alone.
09:04A relenting fool, shallow, changing woman.
09:10But the uniquely close Cumberbatch told Radio Times that he was thrilled to receive the news.
09:16And during a costume fitting, no less.
09:18It certainly enhanced the honor of playing Richard,
09:21as well as reading a poem at a ceremony to bury his recently recovered remains.
09:25Your future breath, in prayer for me,
09:29lost, long, forever found.
09:33Ancestral Neighbors
09:34Elaine Hendricks and Lisa Ann Walter
09:37Since meeting on the set of 1998's The Parent Trap,
09:40Elaine Hendricks and Lisa Ann Walter have described themselves as life partners more than best friends.
09:45Walter's 2023 episode of the Ancestry web series Unfamiliar
09:49proved that it goes even deeper than that.
09:52I haven't seen these people in so long.
09:58So weird feeling so, like, detached from all of that, you know?
10:01Yeah, you didn't get to experience it, girl.
10:04You never met any of these people.
10:06Hendricks herself appeared to deliver the news that her and Walter's respective great-grandfathers
10:11grew up just a block away from each other on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan.
10:15Walter was blown away, but Hendricks brushed it off as just a trick of fate.
10:19It's almost not a surprise.
10:21Why in the world would we have met and, like, become besties in six hours?
10:26It was fate.
10:27While we may never know whether they're directly associated,
10:30the friendship of these actresses is really one of the most profound in showbiz.
10:35You know what?
10:35I was old when we did The Parent Trap.
10:37No, you weren't.
10:38We weren't.
10:39It was 20 years ago.
10:40We weren't.
10:40And look at us now.
10:42Through the magic of Hollywood and lots of Botox, we're now the same age.
10:45The two Emmas.
10:47Julia Roberts.
10:48From cousin Edward Norton to not even being biologically connected to her surname,
10:52Julia Roberts made more incredible discoveries than Finding Your Roots could fit in a 2023 episode.
10:58All right.
10:59Please turn on the page.
11:02Julia Roberts, everyone.
11:05What?
11:06Perhaps the most incredible was saved for a bonus clip released online.
11:10Roberts' first ancestor who emigrated from Sweden was named Emma,
11:14like Roberts' actress niece.
11:16And both Emmas share a birthday on February 10th.
11:20Hold on.
11:21February 10th.
11:22Hold on.
11:24My niece, Emma, is born on February 10th.
11:28Well, how about that?
11:29As baffled as Roberts was by this information,
11:31it's also baffling that her niece never publicly commented on it.
11:35After all, there's no comparing the reaction to a wild story that we all have in our ancestries.
11:40Well, I want to tell you about it.
11:42Would you please turn the page?
11:45Subtle is not anything anyone's ever called anyone in my family, by the way.
11:49What are some other fun facts about celebrities' ancestry?
11:52Take us back in the comments below.