Henry Louis Gates Premieres "Faces of America," Finds Out He's Related to Regis Philbin

In the four-part documentary, which debuts February 10, Gates utilizes genealogy and genetics to uncover the ancestral pasts of 12 prominent Americans, ranging from Meryl Streep and Stephen Colbert to Yo-Yo Ma and Eva Longoria (the latter two discover they are distant cousins).

At the New York premiere of his show last night at Lincoln Center, Gates told Speakeasy, only half-jokingly, that "I gotta start writing about white people, I guess," following his successful PBS series "African American Lives."  Especially after the noted African-American scholar discovered that he was 57% white and so thoroughly Irish on his father's side that he was descended from the 4th-century Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages. "I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution!" said a bemused Gates last night, clearly relishing the irony of being a member of a notoriously WASP-y organization.

Gates found that there were plenty of surprises in store for his guests as well. The African-American poet Elizabeth Alexander -- who composed and read the poem at President Obama's inauguration -- and comedian Stephen Colbert discovered they're related. Much to her astonishment, Alexander finds out that she is descended from the British monarch, King John I. The show itself is laced with humor, as when Gates reveals to Colbert that his genealogy is 100% white. "You are the whitest person we've ever tested!" Gates says.

"It was fantastic," said the writer Malcolm Gladwell, who is one of the show's participants and is of Jamaican and English descent. "He's able to discover all this stuff, whether it be confirming family lore that I have a Jewish ancestor or that my family line begins with a slave owner having a child with a slave. It's just amazing -- yet humbling. It gives you a sense of how deeply rooted you are and how much you owe to these people."

Gates says that one of his initial goals in the show was that he hoped to find an Arab and a Jew who are related through time -- and he did: Dr. Mehmet Oz and director Mike Nichols. "It means they have the exact haplotypes, and that they're descended from the same individual some 5,000 years ago. Isn't that amazing?" Gates said.

Perhaps the most shocking relation unearthed between two individuals involved Gates himself. Prior to the show, he had tested the spit of a number of guests in the audience, which included S. Epatha Merkerson, David Remnick, Veronica Webb, and Mario Batali -- only to discover that Gates and Regis Philbin were related via relatives in Ireland. "Regis," said a bemused Gates, "you are my cousin, brother."