Ben Affleck’s ancestors apparently owned slaves — but that’s something he didn’t want the public to know.
The Academy Award-winning actor and director asked PBS executives to edit that detail out of his family tree after it was exposed during the filming of their program “Finding Your Roots,” hacked Sony emails have revealed.
In an email exchange posted by WikiLeaks, the genealogy program’s host Henry Louis Gates Jr. nervously asked a top Sony executive for “advice” in handling Affleck’s special request.
“. . . 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,” the Harvard scholar told Sony chief Michael Lynton in the email chain dated July 22, 2014.
Gates suggested that the censoring could tarnish their branding if word got out and would ultimately be a violation of PBS rules, “even for Batman.”
“Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns,” he went on while also suggesting that Affleck’s shunned relative “wasn’t even a bad guy.”
Source: NY Daily News
