Get Ready for Finding Your Roots: Season 11

Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. returns for its eleventh season on PBS. Over the course of 10 new episodes, Gates and his team use genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis to trace the family trees of twenty compelling guests, telling stories that illuminate America’s fundamental diversity.

As the pages turn in each guest’s book of life, emotional revelations give way to complex questions about identity. Through Gates’ discerning touch, his guests learn what every family history shares—love, courage, and sacrifice—and how our histories transcend borders, merging to form an American root system fortified by its diversity. Along the way, viewers are transported from coastal Africa to the Mississippi Delta; from shtetls in the former Russian Empire to the ancestral lands of the Lakota Nation; from villages in the Philippines to a pirate enclave in Puerto Rico—all in search of the stories that will bring our guests’ ancestors to life. What’s more, this new season also includes a special reveal: the solution to a mystery that has haunted Gates’ own family for generations.

The guest roster for Season 11 includes actors Kristen Bell, Laurence Fishburne, Debra Messing, Michael Imperioli, Melanie Lynskey, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Lea Salonga, Amanda Seyfried, Dax Shepard, and Sharon Stone; celebrity chefs José Andrés and Sean Sherman; novelist Amy Tan; poet Rita Dove; historian Lonnie Bunch; talk show host Joy Behar; musician Rubén Blades; journalist Natalie Morales; and model Chrissy Teigen.