Catch me on NBC

When I moved to LA in 2017, the last thing I thought about was “the industry.” I was moving there as a civilian, so-to-speak, a regular person on a comparatively mundane career path. In my early days in the city, I was having drinks at a bar with a friend along Melrose. While chatting with some folks in another group, I had just shared my recent move when one of them asked me, “So what dream are you chasing?” I laughed, a bit caught off guard but quickly understood why he asked. One of them was interested in a music career, another something industry related that I don’t recall; such paths were the norm for folks who moved to the city in their 20s.

I already shared my affinity for LA in Wheels Up, a city I’ve grown to love. Even in my previous job where I worked with many students and parents who were tied to a variety of roles in “the industry,” (as the world of Hollywood is known) some quite powerfully, I didn’t really give it too much thought. I was even teased by a colleague or two for being so gloriously terrible at recognizing what were apparently very notable names and faces. The awe of show-business has just never been all that alluring to me, though it’s certainly interesting.

What has always captured my fascination is understanding my own history. Like many Black Americans, I’ve always wondered about my people, my earliest ancestors – what countries did they originate from? What cultures were they stripped of during enslavement? I took the Ancestry DNA test back in 2015 and found the myriad of percentages intoxicating. I purchased a membership so I could dig into the depths of discovering my more recent ancestors and found the process incredibly cumbersome albeit addicting. It’s a deep rabbit hole to fall into, so when I saw an ad on Ancestry a couple of years ago asking about interest in getting help with the search, I quickly completed the application. I don’t remember much of what it said or how I found it, but I do remember the description explaining that a TV show was being created around the mysteries of the family tree. After a while of not hearing anything, I completely forgot that I had applied, so when I received a call from a casting director a full two years later, at first there was some initial shock. Not one to turn down a unique opportunity (as you’ve probably gathered on your own), I recovered quickly to accept the offer to complete a casting interview, volunteering my mother as tribute- I mean my partner- for the NBC show, “Roots Less Traveled,” sponsored by Ancestry.

Despite my preamble, I am in no way a part of “the industry” now, lest you misunderstand where this is going. If you’ve never seen the show, the premise is that two relatives take a journey together to unlock unknown information from their family tree. It’s like “Finding Your Roots,” with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., but for regular people (lol) and more streamlined for accessibility in NBC’s #TheMoreYouKnow programming.

Because I was partnering with my mom, I knew we’d be discovering something along the maternal line of my ancestry, but that is literally all we knew when we began. Production told us where we would check-in the first night, but otherwise we had no details and no idea where the journey would lead us. What followed included the fun of gathering old family photos (even raiding my grandmother’s house) and making selfie videos on the road, ultimately leading up to an intense week of filming and learning, meeting some incredible people, and hanging out with a pretty cool (and presumably perpetually exhausted) production team. The days were very long, but I was motivated by knowing each scene would provide new information. We were never told where we were going, just given an address shortly before we were to drive ourselves there. Mom and I were tired a lot; however, we had fun together, our never-ending banter probably being what helped us get cast in the first place. Mom was a great sport because she wasn’t nearly as curious as I was, but she knew what it meant to me to be able to learn whatever we could. The production team, led by the amazing production manager, Sandra, quickly learned some key tools in getting the most out of us: Dunkin’ in the morning for me, Peanut M&M’s anytime for mom (the amount of times someone not-so-subtly slid a few small packages into her hand throughout the day was nothing short of hilarious), and Pepsi at lunch for both of us (Coke drinkers can FIGHT ME).

During the production, each day I came back to a hotel room fully overwhelmed from exhaustion and reeling with new information. From new historical locations and data previously unknown to us, to documents revealing both familiar and completely surprising details about our ancestors, to meeting historical experts, it felt like we covered so much in a short period of time. I didn’t really have time to process it all until it was over. And yet, I would still love more! In the grand scheme of things, the information probably means more to me than anyone else even in my own family, as certainly the experience does. When I think about the path I’m on, a path informed by ancestors far more strong and undaunted than I, I feel only joy and gratitude. The rare look of intrigue and amusement on my 89-year-old grandfather’s face when we shared the what we learned about our family was absolutely the cherry on top.

Catch “Roots Less Traveled” on NBC on Saturday, November 27 at 11am Eastern or online any time after! Follow @nbcroots on Instagram for more info.

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