03 September 2014

Behind the scenes at Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA) ...


Many readers have been watching Season 5 of  Who Do You Think You Are?

If you are part of this crowd (or have never caught an episode) you might find this interview by Thomas MacEntee of Dan Bucatinsky, A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Who Do You Think You Are?, interesting.

“My interview with show co-producer Dan Bucatinsky, who also starred in the popular television series Scandal for which he won an Emmy, provided me with some interesting information about the celebrities, the research methodology and how each episode is created, from start to finish.”

I found this answer particularly interesting and relevant since it highlights that in producing the show they do run into the same issues that each of us has, that sometimes we just get stuck in our research ...

“As for having boring ancestors? “We’ve never turned people away for being boring. We have turned people away because there is no story, no narrative to follow. A document trail runs dry or we hit a wall or we can’t confirm a particular lead that we’re on. Like any mystery, you know, digging into someone’s historical ancestry is about following clues; it is what makes the show so fun to shoot because it is like a scavenger hunt. But if suddenly a clue were to run dry, your story would stop. So we do a lot of research at one time and once in a while someone’s story will either hit a dead end or it will just be ten generations of potato farmers and there’s nothing you can do about it.””

After initially writing this, I also learned that the Genealogy Insider (Diane Haddad) did an Interview With "Who Do You Think You Are?" Producer Dan Bucatinsky and you can have FREE access to a Lisa Louise Cooke Genealogy Gems Podcast where she also interviews Dan Bucatinsky – Episode 113 – An Interview with Dan Bucatinsky of WDYTYA?.  These are all great ways to find out more about what is behind the producing of this popular show.



Editor’s Note:  I have knowingly done research three times for this show.Two of the three times the research trail just went cold in the sense that we could learn a lot about the person and yet not details that make for watchable tv nor could we determine parents or enough details to do much with!.




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