LeVar Burton On What He’s Up to Now & Finding His ‘Roots’
LeVar Burton recently discovered some secrets about his own ‘roots’ in a current episode of PBS’ Finding Your Roots, a show that was inspired by the 1977 miniseries Roots, which launched Burton to fame with his breakout, Emmy-nominated lead performance as Kunta Kinte, an African slave brought to America in the 18th century.
Credit: PBS
In the latest episode, “Fathers and Sons,” according to the hit PBS series, Burton’s great-great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Mary Sills, was raised by a man who was (unknowingly) not her biological father. In fact, Sills was the biological daughter of a white farmer and Confederate soldier named James Henry Dixon, who had a wife and family at the time.
Everett Collection
Burton, who also received an Emmy nod as an executive producer of History’s 2016 Roots remake, has gone on to have a very long career since his days on Roots. The actor became even more famous thanks to a couple of dramatically different TV series. He served as the beloved host of PBS’ educational series Reading Rainbow from 1983-2006, and portrayed fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation character Geordi La Forge during the series’ small-screen run from 1987-94, in four subsequent feature films based on the show between 1994 and 2002, and in the final season of Star Trek: Picard last year. Burton has also done a lot of directing; he helmed episodes of Next Generation and other Star Trek series produced in the ’90s and early 2000s, and directed other television episodes, most recently a 2023 episode of NCIS: Hawai’i. He married makeup artist Stephanie Cozart in October 1992; the couple has a son and daughter.
You can keep up more with Burton at his Instagram.
Finding Your Roots: Fathers and Sons can be watched here.
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1970s Fall TV
September 2023
Take a trip back to the ’70s by looking at the TV Guide Magazine Fall Preview primetime lineups.
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