For decades, Julia Roberts has been one of the most famous people on the planet. And she just found out that she is related to another person who is very famous on this planet (no, it’s not her bestie George, although that would be iconic). The Oscar-winner is distantly related to Glass Onion star (and three-time Oscar nominee) Edward Norton.
Roberts and Norton discovered they are connected in the season premiere of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr, which aired on Tuesday, January 3. Gates walked both actors through their family trees before telling them that they share a distant cousin. The unnamed distant ancestor has not been nominated for any Academy Awards. This discovery was made after Roberts’s and Norton’s DNA was compared to the DNA of everyone who had appeared on the series, including each other.
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“You and Ed share a long, identical stretch of DNA on your ninth chromosomes,” Gates said to Julia Roberts. “This means that you inherited this shared DNA from a distant ancestor, somewhere in the thick of this family tree.” Roberts replied with an emphatic “what?” and said she’s met Norton, but she’s never worked with him.
Norton, on the other hand, pointed out that he wasn’t as lucky in the gene pool. “How come I didn’t get the teeth and the smile?” he said. In addition to discovering that he is distantly related to America’s (no, the world’s) sweetheart, Norton also learned that his 12th great-grandmother is the one and only Pocahontas.
You can stream the season premiere of Finding Your Roots via PBS.
