In a strange turn of events, US actor Edward Norton has just discovered that Pocahontas is his 12th great-grandmother.
The Oscar-nominated actor made the interesting discovery on an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Roots, which aired this week.
Each episode in the series centers on a different celebrity as they analyze genetic code, review historical documents, and learn of their connections to both famous and infamous ancestors.
Past celebrities have included Paul Rudd, who discovered his ancestors changed their name to Rudd from Rudnitsky, and Scarlett Johansson, who discovered that the Danish side of her family actually had Swedish roots dating back to 15th-century royalty. And Sean Combs (aka P. Diddy) discovered that his third great-grandfather was a free man in Maryland in the 1850s, despite the state being a slave state at the time.
This week's episode delved into the history of 53-year-old Norton's family, where it was revealed that he had ancestral ties to Pocahontas - the legendary Native American woman belonging to the Powhatan people who was involved in the colonial settlement of Jamestown, Virginia.
She was immortalized in the Walt Disney movie Pocahontas, which follows a fictional romanticized affair between Pocahontas and English settler John Smith.
In the real story, however, Pocahontas married John Rolfe in Virginia in 1614, before sadly dying just three years later in Gravesend, England, in 1617.
Various other details have since emerged over the years, including that Pocahontas was already married to a Native American warrior names Kocoum and had even bore a child to him, per American Indian Magazine. Pocahontas was then allegedly kidnapped, where she eventually married colonizer John Rolfe.
When Norton was relayed the information that he was related to Rolfe and Pocahontas, and that she was his 12th great-grandmother, he was rightfully surprised. He did reveal that he had heard stories about his relation to them growing up, but had assumed that it was all just a rumor.
"Pocahontas is indeed your 12th great grandma," the show's host historian Henry Louis Gates Jr told him. "You have a direct paper trail [...] No doubt about it," he added.
Norton appeared genuinely shocked, saying: "This is about as far back as you can go."
Also in the episode the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery actor discovered that his ancestors had unfortunately been slave owners. His third great-grandfather held "seven human beings in bondage", including a 55-year-old man, a 37-year-old woman and five girls, aged between four and 10, per BBC News.
Gates then asked Norton: "What's it like to see that?"
The American History X star replied: "The short answer is these things are uncomfortable. Everybody should be uncomfortable with it [...] It's a judgment on the history of this country and it needs to be contended with. When you read 'Slave, age 8', you just want to die."