Regina King, star of the 2019 Emmy-winning TV miniseries Watchmen—along with the show’s creator, Damon Lindelof—are featured on a new episode of Finding Your Roots.
Host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. asks Regina King if her father discussed his roots. “Not at all,” she answers. The actress-director learns her grandfather’s hidden story and the family’s pattern of divorce and abandonment. Ms. King also hears about her maternal Cain ancestors who were married in Elmore County, Alabama, in 1870. As a child, her great-great-great-grandfather was inherited as enslaved property in 1851.
Damon Lindelof knew nothing of the Lindelofs beyond their being Swedish. The writer-producer learns that his great-grandfather arrived in New York from Sweden as an eighteen-year-old. Dr. Gates also traces the maternal roots. Both of his mother’s parents were the offspring of Jewish immigrants.
This episode of Finding Your Roots debuts Tues., April 12, 2022, at 8 p.m. on PBS.