I feel like such a dork for admitting this out in the open and everything, but I really like that show Who Do You Think You Are? It’s an American version of a show that I believe started in Ireland…? Anyway, Lisa Kudrow executive produces it and she brings some really fascinating people in, and they spend an hour’s show researching their ancestry through public records, databases, old newspapers, whatever (and whoever) they can get their hands on. Earlier this week, I mentioned in passing that I had seen Kim Cattrall’s and it was crazy – her grandfather was a bigamist! But yeah, I feel like a dork. When I’m home on a Friday night (too often), I watch it while folding my laundry. It’s like my thing now.
So tonight’s episode should be a doozy! DAME GWYNETH is the celebrity! Oh, you know it’s going to be posh and brilliant, and you know Gwyneth is descended from, like, the best people ever. There are no peasants in her background! No “laborers” or “janitors”. Gwyneth comes from a long line of Important People. According to the previews:
Gwyneth Paltrow has discovered a fascinating family fact while tracing her roots for hit U.S. TV show Who Do You Think You Are? – her great great great grandfather was a beloved Jewish holy man.
The actress tracked her ancestors back to Barbados while taping the show, which airs in America on Friday night (01Apr11) – but the biggest surprise came when she returned to New York and discovered her great great great grandfather was a “master of Kabbalah” – the mystic Jewish offshoot Paltrow studies today.
Documents show he was “a miracle worker” who once saved his community from a raging fire through his faith.
She said, “This is all kinda blowing my mind.”
[From Contact Music]
Don’t you get it? Gwyneth is so wonderful that even her ancestors are better than your ancestors. God, I can’t wait! I bet she cries when she realizes just how special and elite her relatives were. Here’s the preview:
Photos courtesy of Fame & WENN.
i like the show too
I also like it 🙂
I researched my ancestors and discovered I didn’t have any.
I figured this would be the way the show went with her on it. No peasant talk allowed.
My friday night is watching this while i straighten my hair getting ready to go bowl…..and you thought your life was sad!
I saw the previews for this last week and was hoping and praying that Celebitchy would have it on your website!
I totally watch this show too. I am so lame i sometimes fall asleep in the middle of it. I truly find it interesting, but fridays are TOUGH!
They had it on in Canada i think a year or 2 ago. But ours was only a 30 minute show. Not sure what that says….
@ Rita – don’t worry, dearest! You can have some of mine 🙂
rita, you too?!
@Elizabeth
With a name like Elizabeth, they must be royals…..I’ll take them….even the black sheep.
I liked the one where Sarah Jessica Parker discovered she should not really be here at all because her rello was scheduled to be burned at the stake, or sommat.
April’s fool, right?
Sounds like such an odd ancestry for Dame Goop: I would have said British royal ancestors, with a side dish of French family connections.
Hmmm, maybe we’re all special snowflakes:
“Go back a few milleniums and we’ve all got the same ancesters” from Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2138060/
My grandson called me one night several years ago and said, “Nanny, I have to do a report on one of our ancestors…who would be someone interesting?” I told him to Google the Dalton gang and call me back..well, he flipped out, read everything he could, printed the pictures of the hangings, etc…told him I was sorry there weren’t more genteel ancestors to choose from! BTW: he made an A! lol
I saw this show for the first time last week when Steve Buscemi was the celeb. Really liked it – though, that may be in part due to the fact that I love Donnie… errr, Steve. Off topic, but when does season 2 of Boardwalk Empire start? Totally addicted to that show.
Meh about Gwennie, though. Don’t hate or love her. She just seems so vanilla.
found a couple of cousins, we emailed and
so what
came out of it.
@sarah, I’m a little jealous of your Friday night. Sounds bitchin’.
The husband of a friend of mine can trace his ancestry back to the invasion of England in 1066, one of his forefathers was a norman nobleman who participated in the battle of Hastings. That kind of thing would rattle poor Gwyneth.
@Harley….I think they are just beginning to film season 2 of BE, so I’m sure it won’t be on for a while.
I love it, too!
This is the first I have heard of this show – hey, Ms. Paltrow – there is an entire town in England that carries my family name! Take that blondie! ha ha
Thanks brin! 🙂
First we have to wait for Mad Men and the Hamm dong, and now we have to wait for BE too? *le sigh* If there are delays with True Blood and Walking Dead I will just cry.
Yeah, my family is Scottish
So we were drinking and fighting when your great grandfather was creating a weird religion.
We had more fun.
of course goop has goopy ancestors. my ancestors were not gooptastic – just drunken irish farmers.
Can you imagine her religious ancester rolling in his grave at having such a superficial twit as a descendant? (And I too, will probably be doing my laundry tonight! Work all weekend, only time I can do it!)
I adore this show and wish the producers would come and help me find my missing links and btw, Gwenyeth, my relatives are cooler than yours! =)
Kate and JD’s girl: OMG I think we might be related! Ha!
16 (Sorry my thing is messed up cant read your name!) I live in MT, it is still freaking cold and there is not much to do, WE BOWL!
i think tracing ancestors can be interesting. i remember having to do it for 2nd grade when i learned that my great great great great great grandpa was king. that was pretty cool.
@Kaboom
Tracing ones family back that far must be incredibly interesting. I thought you might tie your screen name into the battle of Hastings but I guess that’s just a conincidence (LOL).
Big deal. I’m related to the Duke of Earl and Count Chocula.
@Harley…I know! Hope they re-air season one so we can remember before season 2 starts!
Well my great-great-great-great (add a few more greats) grandfather wrote the national anthem for Italy. Take that!!
I wish she could have a relative like my father, whenever anyone asks him where his ancestors are from he says “Alabama.”
Kaiser,
Who do you think you are? is entertaining, but you must check out the better version of this concept… Faces of America, on PBS.
Faces of America was a far superior show. The host was Henry Louis Gates, and he offered narration including an explanation as to how geneologists were able to locate specific records.
Yo-Yo Ma’s journey took the viewers to the countryside of China. There, a relation Yo-Yo’s, an elderly man who spoke only Chinese excitedly gestured towards the wall. Inside of the wall, there were ancient scrolls tracing the Ma family back to the 15th century Han Dynasty. Yo-Yo was actually named by one of these ancestors (seriously). The ancestor has written out thousands of names of for all the successive generations of the Ma family.
Meryl Streep was profiled, she had peaceful Quaker ancestors, and other ancestors who actively fought against Native Americans.
Stephen Colbert found out he was of Canadian ancestry. Hilarity ensured.
Good stuff.
My family traced our ancestry back in ’88 and found we are decendents of the first founded Louisiana Creole society who were wealthy business and landowners. Take that, Goopy! 🙂
@Sarah, I’m in Maine, we just got 12″ of new snow, bowling is like a beautiful fantasy right now.
I’m related to George Clymer, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Other than that the only amazing thing about my ancestry is how many different nationalities I’m spawned from. And in the same way that black people born in America insist on being called African-Americans like they were born in Africa then emigrated to America and thus have dual citizenship, I insist upon being called a German-Irish-Dutch-Scottish-English-French-Czech-Swedish-Norwegian-Finnish-American (give or take a few nationalities I haven’t discovered yet), even though I was born in America so I only have the one citizenship.
Hey Goopy, my ancestor is Danel Boone. I bet he’d kick your mystic’s ass, then skin a bear for a coat. Just saying.
TQB: I will quit whining now! We have just had rain, so you win!
I hope for her sake she doesn’t discover any peasants in her family line.
I don’t think so, my great,great,great,great,great grandfather is Nicholas Lewis, uncle and guardian of Merriwether Lewis. Oh yeah, and distant cousin of George Washington. Shove that up your goop hole gwennie
I would have paid money to see them tell her she only had the dregs of society as ancestors. Though she never would have let that air!
I haven’t seen this show, but I did catch an episode of the one PBS did a while back that was the same thing. It was interesting, I’ll have to check this out sometime.
oh no, my ancestors are better than hers – my great, great grandfather had four wives, and he produced a prodigious number of healthy children scattered around the world today – very powerful sperm, and all that. this side of the family lives up to over 80 years old, men included. take that gwyneth.
I like the show but I don’t care about Gwyneth’s ancestry.
Oh, god, is she again blathering about the “rabbinical dynasty” she came from? STFU.
Sweet jesus. Those outfits. Haven’t even read the article yet, I just needed to comment on those outfits. Baby girl don’t know how to dress that body. She’s as bad as Jessica Simpson. She has a good figure, she’s very tall and slim, but she has no sex appeal whatsoever. And that’s fine. Some people just aren’t sexy. But she needs to stop trying to dress sexy. Also, she needs to stop pretending she has a tiny waist (she’s thin… but her waist is quite wide). God. I wish she would just give me a call and I’ll pick out her clothes for her. Why do these people never take my advice?? At least hire a bloody stylist (not rachel zoe!) who knows body types very well and knows how to dress a slim apple shape.
Why the hell would this make you feel like a geek, what are you 16? People watch television, big fucking deal.
Sorry, I’m feeling bitchy today and I have a feeling it’s going to get me in trouble at some point. Anyway dude, you don’t have to apologize for liking something!
Well, Gwenyth is a half-ass Jew like me. Her dad was Jewish, like mine and her mother is a WASP…OMG maybe we’re related! I’m going to call her to have tea!
Descended from Charlemagne (like a few million other people) and William the Conqueror. Almost everyone has someone in their ancestry who would be considered “interesting”. The show producers must know that too, it would be more than boring to discover that your celebrity is related to absolutely no one noteworthy at all.
A great show!
Studied up on my ancestors awhile back and was surprised to find out how many had been probed by aliens (outerspace ones). I think one of my uncles set it all up though.
Once all this came out the family reunions stopped being fun. Beth @40, can I come to one of yours?
@danielle – “superficial twit” ROTFLMFAO. Very funny…and very true…blech I love the show but she gives me such horrific indigestion of the brain that I cannot watch this one…UGH
Oh and btw…WTF is she wearing in the above photo??? And WHY does she always do the ‘pigeon toe’ stance…
“Documents show he was ‘a miracle worker’ who once saved his community from a raging fire through his faith.”
Document Update (Uh-oh!): Goop’s ggg grandfather was actually the schlemiel janitor who started the fire over at the big synagogue.
The real ‘miracle worker’came out and yelled at him: “Vhat’s wrong with you? You mashugana no-good-nik sweeper! Do you have ‘goop’ for brains or vhat???”
Thus, the Goop legacy was born.
lol @ wunderkindt
I used to watch the show pretty interesting, wish I could trace my ancestry.
kpist (#38), it looks as though we are distant cousins, because I share your Lewis ancestry: my great-grandfather was a Lewis, of the same line.
I’m a genealogist, both my parents’ families were from Kentucky, and I can tell you that an extremely large proportion of us “hillbillies” possess some of the bluest blood in the country — not that it means a hell of a lot. So much for GOOP genetics.
So, I see Gwynnie’s Kabbalistic fire-fighting janitor and raise her two Mayflower passengers, Chief Powhatan, and a Jamestown colonist, not to mention the usual widespread Charlemagne/William the Conqueror/Plantagenet ancestry, which so many people share. Cards on the table, Paltrow!
(Seriously: more people have royal blood than you’d ever realize. The only trick is finding it. And it’s not overwhelmingly difficult to track your family’s history, once you learn the ropes.)
Worst case scenario: many of us here are probably, no more than likely, related to Gwyneth. It’s very true: go back enough generations and almost everyone is a cousin. You can take that to the bank (I am my OWN cousin — second cousin 3X removed, as a matter of fact — and cousin to both of my parents, due to some interesting marriages several centuries back).
Sluggo-I luv ya!:-)
My Dad used to tell us our ancestors rode with Cochese..dunno how true that is, but I do know I am a fighter. 🙂
She should be married to an older brawny brunette Daniel Craig and delivering the snark like Heather No. 1 before Christian Slater ruined the movie Heathers by killing the best character. Then the world will love her for being herself.
@Sluggo–Interesting stuff. I’m trying to trace my ancestry, but it involves Poland. ::Sigh::
Love that show! I don’t know much about my ancestors but as an first generation Aussie- of european parents I am some what disappointed I haven’t descended from convicts 🙁
I’ve watched this show from the beginning and I love it. Brooke Shields was interesting. Her family home was the actual Louvre Museum. There are statues of her relatives in museums on horse back from the 1200s. I even enjoy episodes of “stars” that I don’t like. I’m not related to anyone interesting that I know of.
Next week is Ashley Judd! HAHAHA. She is suppose to be way worse than Gwyneth.
Finding your ancestors — or, at the very least, distant relatives — is a lot easier these days, thanks to the RootsWeb World Connect project. Millions of people are uploading their family histories there … and it’s free. The LDS FamilySearch database is also free. Any information from these two sources needs to be taken with a grain of salt, though, because it’s quite often unsupported info — but certainly a great place to start.
A lot of people don’t realize that Ellis Island has an online database (you have to register, but it’s free to use) with a large chunk of their records uploaded. This is a great source, though it sometimes requires a lot of patience due to things like different surname spellings, etc.
Ancestry.com: you’ve seen the commercials and it IS a great place, but boy howdy! is it expensive. You can get a free trial, though — go in and work the databases — just make sure you cancel in time! (I joined in 1999, when it cost $39.95 a year for the WHOLE SITE … now it costs hundreds and hundreds of bucks, so I haven’t renewed for a long time.)
Some public libraries, particularly larger ones or the central county facilities, have genealogy departments. And the National Archives can be extremely helpful at a very low cost, if you’re lucky enough to live close to one.
Of course, the best and easiest way to start is ask your older family members, see what they remember, WRITE IT DOWN (or better yet, record the conversation) and then hit the Internet.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I’m a genealogist — and once you get bitten by the genie-bug, you turn into a rabid fanatic. It’s fascinating and rewarding. (I haven’t put any URLs here because it might register as spam, but Google will yield results in a heartbeat.)
a kab. master doesn’t make for a great ancestor!!! mine are all princes and kings!
I love the show and it started an interest in my own roots. I was able to trace back my maternal ancestors to a small town in Switzerland. They were homebodies because they stayed there for centuries and basically started the town! Going further, I discovered that they were descended from German royalty. (pass the crown)
I’m an archivist and genealogist, so I love any shows about tracing roots. Guess that makes me a super nerd, but I own it, baby!
Since I’m adopted, I have a hard enough time trying to trace my birth family. But my adoptive family is endlessly fascinating to learn about. One of my great grandfathers was the town doctor and last to perform house calls, and is featured in a historical museum there. Very cool.
Sarah, if it is okay if I ask, where are you in Montana?
I think Lisa is really cool and very talented. She has such a great sense of humor.
I like the show, but skipped this episode. I just couldn’t watch Paltow. I’ll catch the next one.
Hundreds of dollars a year, who do they think they are?
I love the title, Kaiser, you crack me up. I had it on but really wasn’t watching it. I seem to recall some mention of her great great grandmother being a maid and having trouble getting a man. Maybe I was just hearing things. Shocked that she would let it be made public knowledge.
… one relative of mine rode with Wild Bill Hickock … another was a horse thief … My Dad thought this was the funniest damn thing ever.
Hmmmm…My greatgrandfather and his brother fought on opposite sides during the Civil War. And a female ancestor was the first female mail carrier in the US and I’m distantly related to Katharine Hepburn. Oh, and a great uncle was ambassador to Germany.
I never really thought about it before, but I guess I do have a few noteworthy folks in my family tree.
Just thought of another one! Hubby has a female ancestor that moved to Australia and did some sort of work with aborigines that apparently had never seen someone with red hair before, so they called her “Katie With The Hair On fire.” I thought that was kinda cool.
“Danny:
April 1st, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Once all this came out the family reunions stopped being fun. Beth @40, can I come to one of yours?”
Danny, sure you can… 😀
i dunno when we’ll have one of those, again… though. the older relatives have lots of drama between them – and some us youngins avoid the reunions because we get caught up with the olderlings’ drama…
but yeah, when it’s good, it’s GREAT! 🙂
Whatever her ancestors bequeathed her with, it certainly wasn’t self-awareness. I mean what on earth is that first outfit she’s wearing? The colour is totally wrong for her and makes her look incredibly old and hatchet-faced. As for the length of the skirt, it looks like she raided it from Apple’s wardrobe.
Hang it up, Goopy – there’s only so much botox and fillers can do, and you’re not fooling anyone!
Aren’t her parents still alive? Why does she need to go on a show to look up her ancestors?
EMMA: How should we dress? That describes me: thin apple shape, no waist (or wide waist). Tallish. Broad shoulders.
My great great ….grandfather was the rabbi who kicked her great great…grandfather rabbi out of the synagogue.
Considering who my ancestors are she’s probably right. Why couldn’t I have been adopted by the Kennedy’s?
Gwyneth was definitely more excited about the holy man than the maid. It reminded me of that episode of Frasier where he and Niles fancy they’re descended from the Romanoffs, then find out their ancestor is actually the maid that stole from the royal family.
I thought it was also super bitchy and passive-aggressive of her to continually rave about how much she loved her father. It seemed like a back-handed slight of Blythe Danner.
Finally, in my last bit of Gwyneth nit-picking, in natural light she looked a bit rough for 38, like she should have stayed out of the sun a little more when she was younger. Miaow.
She plays up her Jewish father to give herself some “quaint” ethnicity and distract people from the fact that she’s just a WASP snob like her mother.
I’m descended from Kenneth I of Scotland. While lineage is fascinating, it’s who a person is in the present, not who they came from in the past that really matters.
I only saw a snippet of the show and it was quite interesting. One of her great-aunts as killed as a baby a few years before her grandpa was born and the mom was clearly devastated considering she birthed another girl two months after the death. The grandpa had issues with the mom since it was clear she was suffering from lifelong depression and it affected the family deeply. I sort of felt that Gwennie showed a glimmer of humanity there when she said that as a mom she understood the woman’s pain.
It was just that clip. I”m not sure how the rest of the episode went.
Only one holy man? Goopy, you’re slipping. Time to drop the bomb that you are related to Jesus AND Vishnu.
@Bill Hicks is God has it exactly right in that first sentence. As a born-and-raised Jew who has accepted I’ll always be mistaken for a WASP, I know how that crap works. I try to keep most of myself out of it. But Gwynnie has got to be an unabashed bather in that slime.
The funniest thing for me about this is that if the Kabbalist rabbi was her great-great-grandfather, I can absolutely guarantee that one of his female descendants “studying” the Kabbalah would offend him deeply. The ultra-Orthodoxy (except for the VERY few people selling the water and making their living off Madge, etc.) to this day believes the Kabbalah is only for men who are 40 or older No one else is supposed to study it. And certainly in the mid-19th century, the attitude of a holy guy well-versed in Kabbalah would NOT be the benevolent, glowing, exotic-but-still-safely-whitish “connection” Goop surely imagines. She thinks this is a lovely spiritual discovery. Were he alive today, her now-gushed-over ascendant would probably find something in the Talmud or the Mishnah to justify physically punishing her. (There used to be lashings, for out-of-line women, in certain situations.)
In the last pic it seems like her shoes are 2 size too big for her feet!!!How can she walk with them and not fall??
On my Mom’s side we’re related to Chief Winnemucca and on my Dad’s we’re supposed to be decendents of either Robert the Bruce or Sir William Wallace. I’m in the process of doing the research (Still going through paperwork and other information my Dad had found before he passed away).
@ bluhare:
When you made that crack that you were related to Count Chocula…man you made my day. I was cracking up for hours after that! Hope you don’t mind, but I may end up using that line one of these days in my creative writing. 🙂
@bluhare and @justme OMG I was snorting tea through my nose and making my co-workers wonder if I forgot my meds today after reading the duke of earl / count chocula comment THANK U BLUHARE!!