Good episodes of the BBC’s long-running genealogy series are either interesting or revealing – Andrew Garfield’s is both
“We are a mushy family. We’re an easy cry,” says Andrew Garfield shortly before one of the many times he tears up during his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?. The actor is the A-lister in the line-up for this 22nd series that also features Diane Morgan, Aisling Bea and Will Young.
However, the relative fame of the subject has never dictated the success of an episode (see Danny Dyer). Instead, it is whether their particular ancestry actually throws up anything interesting – and what it reveals about the descendent in question.
Thankfully, Garfield’s episode proves a winner in both categories. Not only does his family history prove both tragic and unexpectedly Hollywood-adjacent, but Garfield is an open book of overflowing emotion: earnest, endearing and easily moved. He certainly wasn’t lying about being mushy. It’s entirely possible that the actor would be wide-eyed and well up by simply learning that a great-aunt was partial to jam sandwiches.
Instead, the stakes are much higher. After an amiable introduction that covers Garfield’s hobby of cold-water swimming, a childhood photo of himself in a prophetic Spider-Man costume and a touching tribute to his mother Lynn, who died in 2019, we learn that Garfield’s father descends from Polish Jews who emigrated first to London and then to Los Angeles (where Garfield was born). Garfield knows little about this side of the family, chiding himself for being “a bad Jew” who cannot read the Yiddish on the back of one of the few photographs his father Richard provides.
But he is eager to learn – “it’s like being Indiana Jones with your own soul!” – and follow up on the origins of his immigrant great-grandparents, whose paths are obscured not only by the Westernisation of their names (Garfinkiel to Garfield and Kupczyk to Cooper) but also by the systemic destruction of Jewish records that took place in the early 20th century. Indeed, Garfield’s family story reflects the history of their people through great persecution.
In Kielce in southern Poland, Garfield discovers that his paternal great-grandfather had five sisters. He is conflicted to learn about his ancestor’s decision to emigrate to London and leave the women of his family behind in a country where antisemitic sentiment was becoming increasingly violent. The weight of visiting the building where his relatives lived, the likelihood that they would have been moved into the ghetto by the Nazi invasion, and a visit to the Holocaust memorial at Treblinka after learning that at least three of his great-great-aunts were probably murdered at this time, prompts more (justified) tears.
But there is also the happier, extraordinary revelation that a great-great-aunt married a cousin of Władysław Szpilman, the famous composer and subject of the Oscar-winning film The Pianist. He was relieved to find out that she had escaped to Rio de Janeiro before the war started.
Remarkably, this is not the only connection that Garfield’s ancestors have with his industry. One great-great-uncle emigrated to LA and opened a clothing store that served the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Meanwhile, his grandfather’s cousin Bernard, a journalist and author, was part of the military unit nicknamed the Monuments Men, who were responsible for tracking down Nazi-looted art and who inspired another movie starring George Clooney. Garfield, who is evidently a great lover of art, beauty and creativity, instantly feels a connection to a man who feels the same way.
With Garfield’s puppy-dog enthusiasm and a genuinely fascinating story of suffering and survival, Who Do You Think You Are? continues to be as surprising as it is satisfying even into its third decade.
‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ continues next Tuesday at 9pm on BBC One