Why Luther King Jr. paid Julia Roberts' birth expenses 1:19
(CNN) --
We're uncovering more and more details about Julia Roberts' ancestors.
Not long ago, the internet broke the news that civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. had paid the hospital bill for his birth.
Julia Roberts' relationship with civil rights goes beyond her history with Martin Luther King Jr.
Now comes the news that there was a big secret in the "Ticket to Paradise" star's family.
Julia Roberts in 2022. Credit: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for SeriousFun Children's Network
In Wednesday's episode of the PBS series "Finding Your Roots" with Henry Louis Gates, Roberts is shown learning that she was not actually related to her supposed great-great-grandfather, Willis Roberts.
Gates shared with the award-winning actress the news that the older Roberts had actually died more than a decade before her great-grandfather, John, was born to her great-great-grandmother, Rhoda Suttle Roberts, in the 19th century.
"But oh wait, so I'm not a Roberts?" she asked Gates.
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Gates explained that, thanks to DNA, they had been able to link Roberts and her cousin to a man named Henry McDonald Mitchell Jr. who was her biological great-great-grandfather.
Edward Norton discovers that the real-life Pocahontas is his twelfth great-grandmother.
"So we are Mitchell?" Roberts asked Gates.
"You are Julia Mitchell. You are not a Roberts biologically," he replied.
"Wow," Roberts said.
"Do I still have my head on straight? Am I in front of you?"
According to research by Gates and his team, Mitchell was married with six children, and his mother lived four houses away from Rhoda Suttle Roberts.
"On one hand, I'm really impressed. And it's fascinating," Roberts said.
"And on the other hand, there's, you know, a part of me when I'm calmer, I can still come to terms with the idea that, you know, my family is my family. And I prefer the last name Roberts."
Julia Roberts
