Ben Affleck Finding Your Roots, Ben Affleck pushed to ensure his slave-owning ancestor was not featured on the PBS documentary series Finding Your Roots, leaked emails published on WikiLeaks reveal.
The emails between Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates and Sony chief executive Michael Lynton show Gates' dealing with the issue of featuring the slave-owning portion of Affleck's past on the popular PBS program."Here's my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors — the fact that he owned slaves," Gates' leaked email states. " Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?"
The email chain is part of thousands of Sony emails revealed on the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks site last week.
Affleck is never referred to by name, but he is referred to as "Batman" and there is mention of talking to the "megastar" on a Detroit set where he was filming. Affleck shot Batman vs. Superman in Detroit.
Affleck did appear on Finding Your Roots on Oct. 14 and there was no mention of the slave-owning ancestor.
Affleck's representative did not respond to a request from USA TODAY for comment.Gates told the Associated Press in an emailed statement: "For any guest, we always find far more stories about ancestors on their family trees than we ever possibly could use."
"We decided to go with the story we used about his fascinating ancestor who became an occultist following the Civil War," the statement continues. "This guy's story was totally unusual: we had never discovered someone like him before."
In the revealed email exchange, however, Gates expresses concern about compromising the show's "integrity."
"Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand," Gates writes in the emails, adding that he wouldn't "demonize" the slave-owning ancestor.
"Now Anderson Cooper's ancestor was a real s.o.b.; one of his slaves actually murdered him. Of course, the slave was promptly hanged. And Anderson didn't miss a beat about that," Gates writes.
The New York Daily News reported the story on Friday.
The email chain is part of thousands of Sony emails revealed on the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks site last week.
Affleck is never referred to by name, but he is referred to as "Batman" and there is mention of talking to the "megastar" on a Detroit set where he was filming. Affleck shot Batman vs. Superman in Detroit.
Affleck did appear on Finding Your Roots on Oct. 14 and there was no mention of the slave-owning ancestor.
Affleck's representative did not respond to a request from USA TODAY for comment.Gates told the Associated Press in an emailed statement: "For any guest, we always find far more stories about ancestors on their family trees than we ever possibly could use."
"We decided to go with the story we used about his fascinating ancestor who became an occultist following the Civil War," the statement continues. "This guy's story was totally unusual: we had never discovered someone like him before."
In the revealed email exchange, however, Gates expresses concern about compromising the show's "integrity."
"Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand," Gates writes in the emails, adding that he wouldn't "demonize" the slave-owning ancestor.
"Now Anderson Cooper's ancestor was a real s.o.b.; one of his slaves actually murdered him. Of course, the slave was promptly hanged. And Anderson didn't miss a beat about that," Gates writes.
The New York Daily News reported the story on Friday.
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