WATCH: Jon Cryer Gets Stunning Info About a Relative on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’
Exclusive
Over the past eight years, nine seasons and across two different networks (first on NBC, now on TLC), the genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? has surprised plenty of celebrities with insights into their distant ancestors.
The show looks to keep that up when it begins its 10th season May 21 on TLC, as evidenced by an exclusive clip we have from the season premiere.
In the clip, actor Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) meets with early American historian Sharon Salinger, who blows Cryer’s mind with information on his nine times great-grandfather, James Adams. It turns out Adams was a Scot who fought during the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, part of the Third English Civil War.
“This is a Braveheart scenario!” Cryer exclaims. And while this particular battle was not the one chronicled by that film, the principle of Scots fighting for their independence is the same.
Unfortunately, an inventory from that time shown to Cryer (pictured below) indicates that Adams was captured as a prisoner of war and sent to the North American colonies to labor as an indentured servant at an ironworks that had purchased him along with other captured Scots.
Cryer continues to register shock and fascination as he learns more about his relative, and the harrowing lifestyle he led as he was forced to the New World under conditions of indentured servitude. While unlike outright slavery in that it eventually may have led to Adams’s freedom after a period of time, it was still a terrible situation in which he had no civil rights and remained the property of his “master” during the length of the contract.
Check out the clip here:
Season 10 of Who Do You Think You Are? will also feature celebrities Hilary Duff, Jean Smart, Laverne Cox, Megan Mullally and Molly Shannon.
Who Do You Think You Are?, Season 10 premieres Monday, May 21, 9/8c, TLC
