Celebs

Report: Affleck’s Script Changed Dramatically After It Was Locked

Ben Affleck’s ancestry has become a point of controversy. AFP/Getty Images

By Adam Vaccaro

April 23, 2015

1 minute to read

A leaked script draft shows that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates removed a segment about Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestor from an episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots much later in the production process than previously disclosed, Gawker reports.

Gawker said its copy of the locked script showed Gates originally began the production with a reference to Affleck’s now very public family history, which included an ancestor who owned more than 20 slaves. It also included an interview with Affleck about the ancestor:

GATES: This is the slave schedule of the 1850 Census. In 1850, they would list the owner of slaves in a separate Census.

AFFLECK: There’s Benjamin Cole, owned 25 slaves.

GATES: Your third great-grandfather owned 25 slaves. He was a slave owner.

As Gawker reported, when a script is locked, it generally means it’s ready to go and there will be no further changes. However, the episode, which aired in October of 2014, ultimately eschewed the ugly piece of ancestral history. Affleck lobbied Gates last summer to omit mention of the finding, which Affleck now says he considered embarrassing. The dispute was revealed in leaked emails between Gates and Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton from July, which according to Gawker were exchanged after the script had been locked.

Gates said in July that making the change would compromise the show’s integrity, and referred to it as a “violation of PBS rules, actually, even for Batman.’’ (Affleck is donning the Batsuit next summer.)

Since the story broke, Gates has said that the slavery element of Affleck’s ancestry was ultimately taken out because “in the last season, we had several stories about ancestors who owned slaves and we couldn’t use them all.’’

Gates told Boston.com Tuesday that he planned to include the finding about Benjamin Cole in a book about the show. Affleck himself revealed Cole’s name on Wednesday.

Gates has not responded to a request for comment from Boston.com on the script leaked to Gawker.