Edward Norton Is Absolutely Horrified By His Origins
Edward Norton learned that his ancestors owned slaves while he was guest starring on the PBS hit series Finding Your Roots.
Recently, Edward Norton dazzled audiences in Knives Out: Glass Onion by playing a wealthy character whose success is secretly built on the accomplishments of other people. Life imitated art to a degree when it was discovered that Norton’s ancestors owned slaves. Now, Finding Your Roots has shared a clip with Newsweek in which Norton learns that his family owned slaves and reacts to the pictures of a family (including five little girls) of slaves.
Upon learning this, Norton says, “these things are uncomfortable” and that “everybody should be uncomfortable with it,” concluding that, “It’s not a judgment on you and your own life but it’s a judgment on the history of this country.”
In the preview clip of his appearance, Edward Norton is shown the photos by host Henry Louis Gates Jr. First, he showed the former Hulk actor the photos before asking the very blunt question: “What’s it like to see that?” This led the star to wrestle with his problematic family legacy and ponder what this means for the equally problematic origins of America as we know it.
Many questions are left unanswered in what we see in the show’s promotion. For example, we don’t yet know what relation (if any) the slaves in the picture had to Edward Norton. While it seems implied that these may be slaves that his ancestors owned, the preview clip does not make that explicit.
What we do know is that Edward Norton is a descendant of the Rouse family. Specifically, his grandfather, James Rouse, founded the Rouse Company. His great-grandfather, William Goldsmith Rouse, was a lawyer and businessman, and Norton is related to some wealthy real estate developers: Willard Rouse II and Willard Rouse III. While family wealth helped Norton have an easy upbringing and may have helped him become a Hollywood star, he must now contend with the more horrific details of what his ancestors did and the relation between such violence and his family’s comfortable lifestyle.
To be fair, Edward Norton is very frank about being horrified by all of this in the preview clip, and he calls out how easy it is for all of us to abstract horrific historical actions. According to him, once you move “away from census counts” and begin “to personalize things,” it makes everything seem so much more vivid and so much worse. He seemed particularly horrified at the photos of children that were born as slaves, saying that “when you read slave aged 8, you just, you want to die.”
Chances are that Edward Norton never expected to discover such a terrible family history when he agreed to appear in Finding Your Roots. The show will look at many other celebrities’ family histories, including Claire Danes, David Duchovny, and Julia Roberts (she appears in the premiere episode along with Norton). Morbidly, we can’t help but wonder what family skeletons will be shaken loose in the lives of these other celebs.
Meanwhile, Edward Norton should likely be commended for making the best of an awful situation. Rather than get angry or defensive about his family roots, Norton demonstrated humility and shame regarding his own ancestors’ direct role in human suffering. And it’s only by honestly reckoning with the horrors of the past that we can create a better future for all of humanity.
