Mar 05, 2010 Filed Under: News & Rumors,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (0)

Who does Lisa Kudrow‘s 11-year-old son, Julian, think she is?

He has a tongue-in-cheek name for his mother, who says she turns into “a wild animal” where her son’s well-being is concerned. And that’s why he calls her “Satan’s wife,” Kudrow says, smiling. “I’m not Satan because everyone knows Satan’s a man. Only a man can occupy the greatest evil there is. Not a woman.”

In reality, Kudrow’s family hails from eastern Europe, and she set out to find her roots in the new NBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, premiering tonight (8pm ET/PT). The show, adapted from the popular British version, has celebrities — including Sarah Jessica Parker, Kudrow and Spike Lee — search for their ancestors.

In Friday’s first episode, Parker learns that her relatives were involved in the California gold rush and the Salem witch trials. And in the March 19 installment, Kudrow, 46, retraces her great-grandmother’s murder at the hands of Nazis and reconnects with relatives in Poland.

“That is the darkest of the episodes. There’s a ridiculously happy ending now,” says Kudrow, who now texts with her kin.

For the Friends star, who has been low-key since the show ended its run in 2004, the new venture represented a chance to mix producing with investigative research.

“Information is good. As adults, we have to start deciding who we are and how we want to proceed,” Kudrow says. “I’m not trying to stay out of the mainstream, honestly. I loved Friends, and I saw how fun that was for people. I just thought this was a fantastic show.”

Parker, in particular, was eager to be a part of it even though, says the Sex and the City star, “I’m actually a private person. There’s something about attention that embarrasses me. But this to me was not really a story about me. It was for my mother — a wonderful thing I can give her.”

Five years ago, Parker, 44, tried to help her mother trace her family tree. But they had reached a dead end.

“When this came up, I thought, ‘How exciting,’ and I set off on this remarkable journey,” Parker says.

The actress, known for her glam get-ups as Carrie Bradshaw, wasn’t bothered in the least by the show’s lo-fi production values.

“When you do this, there’s no hair-and-makeup people. No lighting. One camera. It’s nice to work in film without any of the vanity attached. It was so liberating.”

What surprised the Ohio native the most about her roots? “How long we had been here and what role my family had played in historical times in our country,” says mother of three, whose husband, Matthew Broderick, also has his own episode. “It gives me a better sense of who (my children) are now, too. It’s wonderful that both Matthew and I had this opportunity that we can hand along to our children, a real academic and emotional line of ancestry.

“I was just shocked that my family was part of things that shaped who we are as a culture and a society. I feel, very simply, more connected, with a sense of pride that I belong here, that it wasn’t an accident.”

As for Kudrow, she’d love to do a second season of the series. But meanwhile, she’s keeping busy doling out dubious advice online as a clueless harpy in the series Web Therapy, about to start its third season this spring at Lstudio.com. And here’s good news for fans of washed-up actress Valerie Cherish: There’s still the possibility of a comeback of sorts of Kudrow’s short-lived but much-loved 2005 HBO series The Comeback.

One thing not in the pipeline: A Friends movie.

“No. There won’t be. Why would there be? I don’t know why there would be,” says Kudrow, who recently guest-starred on pal and co-star Courteney Cox‘s ABC series Cougar Town.

The Central Perk crew has a tough enough time just staying connected, she says.

“We try, but it’s hard. Someone’s always trying to plan some dinner, but no one is ever there at the same time. We’d go to someone’s house, but everyone is really busy and has different lives. Once you have kids, you’re involved in their school and the parents of their school, and it starts defining your social life. It does for me, anyway.”

Source.

Mar 04, 2010 Filed Under: Appearances,Gallery,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (0)

New pictures of Lisa Kudrow, Brooke Shields and Dan Bucatinsky promotiong “Who Do You Think You Are?” at the Apple Store Soho yesterday (March 3rd).

Gallery Links:
Appearances from 2010 > Who Do You Think You Are at the Apple Store Soho – March 3

Mar 03, 2010 Filed Under: News & Rumors,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (1)

Genealogy is all the rage, perhaps due in part to the popularity of Henry Louis Gates ongoing PBS series that trace celebrities and notable people’s lineage, as well as African-American lives in his exhaustive research.

Even National Geographic’s 2009 Human Genome project that featured Dr. Spencer Wells had everyone wondering what their Haplogroup was, and where their ancestors trekked to out of Africa, where the original humans were first recorded.

Now NBC has a genealogy show that is a borrowed format from the UK, and features American celebrities who go backward in time to find out what their stock was comprised of.

Genealogy is a personal thing. It fascinates the person searching for the long, laid to rest information, and for their family members too.

Unless you have a blood-related personal interest or a vested stake by marriage, hearing about someone’s 10th great-grandfather is a sure-fire recipe for being tuned out by the listener.

But celebrities apparently are immune from this and are special, and their quirky dead relatives make them even more so.

Enter “Who Do You Think You Are,” a reality show draped in sentimental musical overlays and portentous pauses as a handful of famous share with us their lineage and personal histories.

First up is “Sex and the City” siren Sarah Jessica Parker, who thinks she’s a pile of no account blood.  Without spoiling the episode, Parker comes to find out she is a distant relative of an almost burned at the stake Salem witch.  It’s interesting to see her wind from one side of the country to the other in her discovery process.

Lisa Kudrow, Spike Lee, Brooke Shields, Emmett Smith and Susan Sarandon are set to discover their roots on the NBC series.

From executive producer Kudrow (“Friends,” “The Comeback”) in conjunction with her production company Is or Isn’t Entertainment and the U.K.’s Wall to Wall productions, the series – an adaptation of the award-winning hit British television documentary series – will lead celebrities on a journey of self-discovery as they unearth their family trees that reveal surprising, inspiring and even tragic stories that are set against chronicled events in American history.

Each episode will take viewers on an emotional, personal quest following one of America’s best-known celebrities into his or her past, sharing the celebrity’s surprise as they uncover stories of heroism and tragedy, love and betrayal, secrets and intrigue that lie at the heart of their family history.

Lisa Kudrow, Executive Producer, and also has her own episode and Dan Bucatinsky, Executive Producer.

“Who Do You Think You Are?” will air its first episode March 5, Friday at 8:00 PM with the Sarah Jessica Parkers Episode.

Monsters and Critics joined a few online journalists and had some questions for Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky.

… read more »

Feb 25, 2010 Filed Under: News & Rumors,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (0)

“Who Do You Think You Are?” — NBC’s version of a British show, debuting Friday March 5 — sounds more like parents admonishing snotty kids than life-altering journeys.

“I was hooked with the first one I saw, and I didn’t know who the person was, and I was riveted,” says Lisa Kudrow, an executive producer and subject of one of the seven episodes tracing people’s ancestry.

“We learn about history, and we don’t think how, on a very intimate level, how it impacts families and sets them on a different course, and how we end up being us because of it,” she says.

In the first episode, Sarah Jessica Parker discovers her roots in the United States stretch back to 1630. Her ancestor, Esther Elwell, accused of being a witch, was remarkably lucky. Days before her trial, the court, which had executed everyone accused, was disbanded.

Like the others who uncover their past, Parker is deeply moved.

“It has changed everything about who I thought I was,” Parker says.

Genealogists provide documents, and celebrities marvel as they examine papers that provide some answers to the question of who they think they are.

Additional episodes focus on Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon, Emmitt Smith, Brooke Shields and Matthew Broderick. As compelling as the documentaries are, the NBC version has its flaws, mainly the annoying tendency to repeat itself as if viewers could not possibly recall what happened before commercial breaks. By repeating so much, it squanders time better used detailing each subject’s heritage. Still, what is shown is incredibly moving.

Kudrow’s great-grandmother was killed when Nazis invaded her town, forced the Jews into a building, made them strip, shot them, then torched the area.

Remarkably, Kudrow not only finds a very old woman who knew her great-grandmother, she also finds a distant relative who had delivered the news of what had happened. Kudrow’s father remembered him telling the story in 1940. When she meets the old man, it’s remarkable.

“It was as hard as I thought it would be,” Kudrow says. 

Source.

Feb 19, 2010 Filed Under: News & Rumors,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (0)

Adapted from a long-running UK series — what else is new? — the upcoming U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? otherwise comes from an out-of-the-ordinary source.

The NBC series, premiering March 5th after the Winter Olympics, is from former Friends star Lisa Kudrow and her Is or Isn’t Entertainment company.

Kudrow, in a teleconference with TV writers, says she first saw an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? while vacationing in Ireland.

“And I wondered why we don’t get to have that show in the U.S.,” she recalls.

The celebrity-driven genealogy series premiered in 2004 on the BBC and has been picked up for an eighth season. NBC has ordered seven episodes of its version, which begins with Sarah Jessica Parker taking what the network describes as “not one, but two awe-inspiring journeys” to Northern California and then Salem, Massachusetts.

Kudrow herself is the subject of the third episode (on March 19th), in which she travels to Belarus to uncover her family’s history with the Holocaust. She knew, from her father, Lee, that her great grandmother, Meri, had been murdered by the Nazis. But she had never been to the site of the atrocities.

“In some ways I was in denial for a long time,” Kudrow says. “My family, they got out. They didn’t go through any of this. So I didn’t feel like investigating it . . . I was afraid just to explore the massacre of my great grandmother and her friends and neighbors. I was afraid of what I would feel.”

Kudrow’s father had researched much of his family’s past, but unanswered questions remained. Who Do You Think You Are? solves most of the puzzle, with Lee Kudrow telling his daughter at episode’s end, “You did good. You did good.”

Might her dad be more impressed with her diligence in this endeavor than with her signature role as Phoebe Buffay on Friends?

“I think he felt I did this for myself, but also for him,” Kudrow says. “I didn’t audition for Friends for my father. But this is something that’s a gift to him. I think that’s how he felt about it anyway. He was getting all this information he didn’t have after working so hard on it. He also knew that it was hard what I did. He got pretty emotional because he was seeing me in pain.”

Kudrow says that she and and her production company partner, Dan Bucatinsky, “initially went to friends to see if they were interested” in tracing their family trees for the purpose of a TV show. “And a lot of them said, ‘Sure.’ ”

No former Friends castmates are in the first seven episodes, but that’s a possibility if NBC renews the series, Kudrow says. Besides Kudrow and Parker, the participants are Matthew Broderick, Emmitt Smith, Brooke Shields, Spike Lee and Susan Sarandon.

Research was done beforehand, to ensure that the celebrity’s family history was interesting enough to entertain a television audience. Otherwise, “they’re all learning as they’re going along,” Kudrow says. “That’s why everyone was nervous.”

She emphasizes that the series is life-affirming and inspirational, a trait not always associated with reality TV programming.

“We’re not looking for dirt on anyone,” Kudrow says. “We’re not looking to make anyone cry. We’re just giving them information that they never knew about before. Susan Sarandon, she didn’t fall apart at all.”

NBC is giving Who Do You Think You Are? a heavy dose of promotion during its Olympics telecasts, which so far are drawing 25 percent more viewers than the 2006 Winter Games from Torino, Italy.

“More is better in getting the word out to the audience that a show is going on,” Kudrow says. “I love that NBC is getting back to basics and putting on quality programming. I just want them to shout it from the mountaintop.”

And during the Winter Olympics especially, that’s decidedly do-able.

Source.

Feb 11, 2010 Filed Under: News & Rumors,Who Do You Think You Are? Comments (1)

Viewers are invited to take an up-close and personal look inside the family history of some of today’s most beloved and iconic celebrities with “Who Do You Think You Are?” Starring in the new alternative series are Matthew Broderick, Lisa Kudrow, Spike Lee, Sarah Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields and Emmitt Smith.

From Executive Producer Lisa Kudrow (“Friends,” “The Comeback”) in conjunction with her production company Is or Isn’t Entertainment and the U.K.’s Wall to Wall productions, “Who Do You Think You Are?” is an adaptation of the award-winning hit British television documentary series. The seven-episode program will lead celebrities on a journey of self-discovery as they unearth their family trees that reveal surprising, inspiring and even tragic stories that are often linked to crucial events in American history.

From the California Gold Rush to the Salem witch trials, from European aristocracy to the beaches of Africa, and from the Civil War to the Holocaust, “Who Do You Think You Are?” will reveal the fabric of humanity through everyone’s place in history. Each week, a different celebrity takes a journey into their family’s past, traveling all over the world. Viewers are given an in-depth look into their favorite stars’ family trees, and each episode will expose surprising facts and emotional encounters that will unlock people’s emotions, showing just how connected everyone is not only to the past, but to one another.