The combination is a particularly wide-ranging one. Rather than concentrating on performers from a single era, season 13 will feature figures whose careers have become associated with markedly different periods of film, television and entertainment culture.
Exactly what discoveries await the four stars has not yet been disclosed. For a programme built around revealing information its guests may not know themselves, keeping that part quiet is rather essential to the arrangement.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. returns to guide the family-history investigations
Gates will return as host for the 13th season, continuing the programme's familiar format of taking well-known guests through research into their ancestry and family histories.
The newly announced names will each sit down with Gates during the upcoming run, although the information released so far does not specify which episode will feature each guest.
That leaves the individual stories — and the family connections uncovered during the research — as the principal unknowns ahead of the premiere.
Finding Your Roots returns to PBS in January 2027
PBS has set Finding Your Roots season 13 for a Jan. 12, 2027 premiere.
The date places the series' return several months after the initial lineup announcement, leaving viewers with the confirmed cast but few details about what their genealogical investigations will uncover.
For now, Moreno, Midler, Louis-Dreyfus and Wyle provide the clearest indication of what PBS has assembled for the next season: recognisable guests with careers stretching across decades, each entering a programme where professional fame is mostly beside the point once the family records come out.
What to expect from the new season
Further details about the individual episodes and the discoveries involving each guest have not been provided in the announced material.
That means the central attraction remains deliberately unresolved. Audiences know who will be sitting opposite Gates when the programme returns on Jan. 12; what those guests will learn about the people who came before them is being saved for television.
