Video: Kristin Chenoweth, Darren Criss & More in FINDING YOUR ROOTS Season 12 Trailer

Kristin Chenoweth, Darren Criss, Tracy Letts, and more are opening up the family archives in the Season 12 trailer of Finding Your Roots. In the new season, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once again dives into ancestral history with celebrity guests, using genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis to trace their family trees. 

Seasons Ten and Eleven of the show were recently nominated for back-to-back Emmy nominations in the category Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special. The show will return on January 6, 2026. 

Other guests this season include actors Lizzy Caplan, Liza Colón-Zayas, Danielle Deadwyler, America Ferrera, Sanaa Lathan, Kate Burto and Delroy Lindo; businessman Barry Diller; musicians Flea, Rhiannon Giddens, Wiz Khalifa and Lizzo; filmmaker Spike Lee; athletes Brittney Griner and Chris Paul; journalist Sara Haines and comedian Hasan Minhaj.

Over the course of the ten 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. Along the way, viewers are transported from coastal Africa to rural Texas; from Muslim communities in northern India to the ancestral lands of the Cherokee Nation; from villages in the Philippines to George Washington’s camp at Valley Forge—all in search of the stories that will bring our guests’ ancestors to life.

At the center of it all, guiding every discovery, is host, writer and executive producer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. 

Throughout the first eleven seasons of the acclaimed series, Gates and his team have made life-changing discoveries for many celebrity guests. Highlights include finding the long-lost biological family of Andy Samberg’s mother (who had been adopted); the identity of Laurence Fishburne’s biological father; Pamela Adlon learning the identity of her maternal grandfather; LL Cool J learning that his mother had been adopted (something she had not known); and Rebecca Hall learning of her maternal grandfather’s African American background, which he had kept hidden (a discovery that inspired Hall’s directorial debut, “Passing”).

Past Broadway alums on the show include Lea Salonga, Leslie Odom Jr., Nathan Lane, Danielle Brooks, Anthony Ramos, Debra Messing, Billy Crudup, and more. Check out a clip with Salonga from Season 11 here.