Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces actors Debra Messing & Melanie Lynskey to ancestors who made bold decisions that forever reshaped their family trees. Moving from shtetls in Eastern Europe to a fruit stand in NY City to the wilds of New Zealand, Gates introduces his guests to relatives who took great risks, overcame enormous hardships—and unwittingly transformed the lives of their descendants.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the long-lost roots of actor Sheryl Lee Ralph and historian Lonnie Bunch—two African Americans whose ancestor's broke boundaries and forged families as they moved from slavery to freedom.

In a unique and highly emotional episode, actor Laurence Fishburne is joined by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.—who finds himself a guest on his own show for the first time. Both men have been haunted by profound family mysteries for years. Cutting-edge DNA detective work will solve those mysteries—introducing Laurence and Henry to ancestors whose names they have longed to hear.