‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Season Finale: Jean Smart Discovers Family From 1635

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
TLC

Last summer, Jean Smart was working on the film Senior Moment when she heard a visitor talking to Lisa Kudrow on the phone.

“I asked the woman to tell Lisa that her show on TLC is great,” says Smart, referring to Who Do You Think You Are?, the genealogy series Kudrow produces.

“Instead, she handed me the phone and Lisa invited me on. I said, ‘I’d love to!’ and then started worrying that my family would be too boring to be included.” Hardly.

The show’s researchers found Smart’s eighth great-grandmother, Dorcas Hoar, born in 1635. “She was an unconventional gal,” says Smart.

Dorcas and her daughters ran a burglary ring and were found with goods stolen from a Massachusetts minister. Later she got in trouble for telling fortunes, a big no-no back in the Puritan era.

Then came a 1692 arrest warrant for witchcraft in Salem. “I’ve always been fascinated by that period of history,” says Smart. “I desperately wanted to be in a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible [about the Salem witch trials].” Must be in the genes.

Who Do You Think You Are?, Season Finale, Monday, June 18, 9/8c, TLC