‘Finding Your Roots’: Liza Colón-Zayas Brought to Tears Learning About Enslaved Ancestor

Things got very, very emotional for The Bear star Liza Colón-Zayas when she stepped into the hot seat for Finding Your Roots‘ latest episode, “Caribbean Roots.”

The actress was one of two stars with ties to the region (alongside Delroy Lindo) to get a guided tour through their previously undiscovered ancestry with host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And while the Bronx native might’ve been expecting to find out some heavy truths about where her forebears came from, she was still brought to tears by what she learned in the session.

Colón-Zayas learned from Gates that her great-grandfather was the son of a woman, Maria Juliana Adolfo, who had been a slave and was transported to Puerto Rico from her original home in Guadeloupe to work in the household of a sugar planter.

Her great-grandfather’s father, she also learned, was Amadee Marrero, who was believed to be a slave at the time as well. Since the two weren’t married, her grandfather’s father, Pablo Marrero Adolfo, was born out of wedlock and into slavery.

“Did you ever think that you would learn the name of an enslaved ancestor?” Gates asked her.

“I thought I might. But it breaks my heart, and I’m crying, not because it’s a total shock to me — it’s because now there is a name to this person,” she said through sobs.

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The lesson made sense to Colón-Zayas based on something she’d remembered about her grandfather; he’d always gone by the nickname “Amadee,” and she surmised that must have been a nod to his own grandfather, which she never knew.

When asked how she would deliver the news about her grandfather and his ancestors to her mother, Colón-Zayas joked, “I gotta come over with a bottle of Coquito!” On a more serious note, she added, “Her whole reality is going to get shaken.”

Finding Your Roots, Tuesdays, 8/7c, PBS