Edward Norton had no idea what was just across the river bend.
The 53-year-old appeared as a guest on Tuesday’s premiere of PBS’s “Finding your Roots,” a show that traces the family tree of entertainers and public figures, where the actor learned that he’s distantly related to Pocahontas.
The “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” star, alongside the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., came upon that the legendary Powhatan woman — whose tragic life was romanticized by Disney within the eponymous 1995 flick — is, in actual fact, Norton’s twelfth great-grandmother.
“I understand that was family lore,” said Gates to Norton, whose family had long claimed that they were related to the long-lasting indigenous figure. “Well, it is totally true.”
“Oh my god,” murmured the shocked Golden Globe Award winner, in a clip posted by Gates on Twitter.
Pocahontas, born around 1596, hailed from the Tidewater region of Virginia, where she was met with English settlers to Jamestown throughout the early seventeenth century. In 1613, the teenage woman was captured and held ransom by colonizers, during which period they forced her to convert to Christianity, and marry tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614.
“John Rolfe and Pocahontas got married on April 5, 1614. Shakespeare dies in 1616, simply to put this in perspective,” the genealogist continued. “Pocahontas died sometime in March 1617 in Gravesend, England, and John Rolfe died around March 1622.”
In 1616, Pocahontas travelled with Rolfe back to England, where she was celebrated as a “princess” of European colonization. She died the next 12 months of an unconfirmed illness.
“This makes you realize what a small piece of the human story you might be,” Norton said of the revelation.
Norton’s lineage is filled with surprises, evidently, as Gates further revealed that John Winstead, the actor’s third great-grandfather, owned slaves — a fact which made him “uncomfortable,” he claimed.
“The short answer is these items are uncomfortable, and you have to be uncomfortable with them, everybody must be uncomfortable with it,” Norton mused. “It’s not a judgment on you and your personal life, however it’s a judgment on the history of this country and it must be acknowledged initially, after which it must be contended with.”
Gates noted that Norton arrived on the taping more prepared to discuss his family “than any guest I can recall.”
Elsewhere within the episode, viewers learn of Norton’s relation to Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, and a nineteenth century pro-union labor activist
“I gotta be honest, considered one of the things that amazes me is that they were making these sorts of records in that sort of a tumultuous time,” he said.
“Finding Your Roots” airs Tuesdays on PBS, and is obtainable to stream online or the app.
