Top 10 Dark Family Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are

It's time to wind out who these celebrities are. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most disturbing discoveries uncovered in celebs’ ancestry. Our countdown includes Chelsea Handler, Megan Mullally, Courteney Cox, and more! What reveal did YOU think was the darkest? Have you uncovered anything shocking in your family’s history? Let us know in the comments below!

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MsMojo is a leading producer of reference online video content of Top 10 Lists, Origins, Biographies, Commentary and more on Pop Culture, Celebrity, Movies, Music, TV, Film, Video Games, Politics, News, Comics, Superheroes. Your trusted authority on ranking Pop Culture.

#WhoDoYouThinkYouAre #WDYTYA #Documentary #Ancestry #Reveals

[Poopcopy]

Steve Bucemi hearing that depression runs in his family that far back and they were fighting and surviving give was uplifting

[donnaleach]

“You make people afraid enough of something completely manufactured, and you can drive them to become murderers, cold-blooded murderers.” So much truth in this statement!

[syria]

Rita Wilson's one broke my heart. She found out that her father was married to another woman before her mother and that they had a son. Sadly, she died three days after giving birth from eclampsia, with her half-brother dying a few months later.

[trinaq]

It's sadly ironic that one of Sarah Jessica Parker's most iconic roles is of a witch, when some of her ancestors died during the Salem Witch Trials.

[erictaylor]

Steve Buscemi is a shockingly amazing person. Before his big break in acting he was a New York City fire fighter.
On 9-11 he headed back to his old fire house and volunteered to help.
Imagine being rescued on 9-11 and you realize the guy rescuing you is the "funny looking one" in Fargo.

[stefansnellgrove]

Chelsea reading what her grandmother Elizabeth had to say to her children “I have nothing” when asking for a small piece of bread is so heartbreaking no mother should go through that. Hearing her read it could feel Elizabeth’s pain of not being able to give her children their basic needs.

[trinaq]

Lisa Kudrow getting emotional over the death of her ancestors really made me cry alongside her. It's disturbingly heartbreaking that so many innocent lives were claimed, all because of one sick mind. 💔

[Uncle_Smidge]

Steve Buscemi's such a sweetie. You just wanna hug him.

[JanieGal]

My story: When I was 18 my dad confessed to me that my Granny wasn’t his biological mother. The next few years I got to learn about Virginia AKA Ginny (my dad’s biological mother.) She was put into the system right after she was born - either because it was the Great Depression and her family couldn’t afford to have a child, a teen mom, or immigrants who weren’t able to afford a child. Ginny wasn’t adopted until she was 3 years old and she went on to marry my Granpy and have 3 sons. When she was 27 she took her own life, just a week after my father turned 6. My dad not his brothers have any memories of her.

My Granpy died in 2021, but before his passing he sent over a box filled with documents - adoption papers, medical records, their wedding certificate and pictures, everything. But there was something in Ginny’s medical records that caught my eye. For the first three years of her life while in the foster care system she was repeatedly abused. A broken arm at 2, a dislocated shoulder at 16 months, etc. But the one that made my blood run cold was that she had a Pap smear done when she was 9 months old.

For the men in the comments or young folks who don’t know; you’re suppose to start getting Pap smears either when you’re sexually active or when you’re over 21 because of an increased risk of cervical cancer.

I’ll repeat: they gave a NINE MONTH OLD a Pap smear.
They gave A BABY - a literal infant - a Pap smear. Why are they giving a baby a Pap smear unless something truly nefarious happened?

[RoseRaines]

Christina Applegate’s story was heart wrenching.

[nanasewdear]

Courtney Cox and I have the same ancestry through her Berkeley, DeSpencer and Mortimer lines. What a dramatic time in English history!

[NormaWills]

My maternal grandmother grew up thinking that her father died when she was little. So, that is the knowledge that she passed on to my mom. When I started researching the family tree, I couldn't find any record of him dying in Scotland. However, I did come across records of my great grandmother divorcing him. In the divorce records, it showed that he abandoned the family & moved to New York. From there, I was able to track his movements of travel to New York and then him living with some of his siblings for a little while. At the beginning of Prohibition, he died from wood alcohol poisoning in Bellevue Hospital.

[nardo]

Lisa's was probably the most coldly brutal mass-murder I've heard on Who Do You Think Are. Stephen Fry in the British WDYTYA had a similar story of his family. The show has uncovered horrible horrible implications from records about slaves, but since slaves could not write down their own stories, and had few people to do it for them, we don't have the kind of first-hand accounts of casual, broad-spectrum, wanton brutality that we have of the Holocaust.

[darkangel_]

A few years ago, I found a cousin that I never knew existed, and we had a connection through our great grandfather. Apparently her great grandmother was his first wife, while mine was his second wife. With his first wife, he had a daughter, whom he abandoned. That daughter in turn, abandoned her son from her first marriage. I don't know if my grandma knew she had a half sister, but speaking to another cousin, she said that to the best of her knowledge, if her father (Grandma's brother) knew, he never said anything. Both my father's parents, rarely talked about family. We also found out that another one of Grandma's brothers, had an illegitimate son, whom he disowned. Because of it, the son turned to drugs and alcohol, which caused his daughter to distance herself, not just for her sake, but her daughter's as well. The daughter of the illegitimate son, was afraid to contact me and my two cousins, because she thought that we would hate her. We told her, "We will never punish you, for the sins of your grandparents. You and your Dad are innocent." After that, she got to talking to us, and is now at ease, knowing she wouldn't be shunned.

[megannwalsh]

Please do a similar list with Finding Your Roots! It’s such a great show!

[MrSaraS]

My mom had learned that her great-grandfather had promised to marry her great-grandmother, gotten her pregnant and then died. She was doing some research along with me and we found him in the records. My mom was shocked to see that he died years after the twins where born! It unraveled that he had abandoned them, left her in public shame and she had reported him to the police. We still have to find the police reports to see what exactly it says. Crazy... All of my great-grandmothers siblings wanted nothing to do with her and her twin brother. They where a shame on the family. Explained a lot of the generational issues we have had on the womens side, that I myself are stryggling with and trying to break that cycle.

[samuelcollantes]

Lisa Kudrow, is definitely her story. Have a happy wednesday morning, Kirsten. Take care and God bless you. Greetings from Colombia to you as well.

[msoda]

Learning family history can be hard. My mother never knew her birth mother she was raised in foster care from the age of 3 until she aged out. My mother was mixed raced born in the early 1960’s her birth father was black and her mother was white. My mom passed away at 36 never knowing her roots so I made it my goal to find out. What I found was dark and ugly. My mom was the product of an affair her birth father never knew she existed until I found him. My grandmother was raised in an alcoholic family, with a lot of physical and mental abuse, and also suffered from alcoholism herself. She attempted to raise my mother, but after three years, of abuse from her father for having a half black child she gave her up because she met and became engaged to a man who did not want A half black child. I also discovered that my grandmother had five children total, including my mother, and ultimately lost custody of all of them because of her alcoholism, but refuse to let any of them be adopted. Sadly, they were raised in foster care and shuffled around.

[JennNofficial]

I was emotional during Reba’s story too as one of her ancestors was a slave owner

[sheronasims]

Suprised Allan Cumming not on here. Most shocking one i ever saw. His grandad died playing Russian roulette in Malaya