Ben Affleck Once Admitted Being ‘Embarrassed’ About A Slave-Owning Ancestor & Tried To Influence The Makers Of The Show Finding Your Roots ( Photo Credit – Wikimedia )
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American actor Ben Affleck has definitely played some memorable roles, from winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay alongside Matt Damon for ‘Good Will Hunting,’ starring in ‘Gone Girl,’ and playing Batman in the ‘Justice League’ films.
However, despite his long and fruitful career in Hollywood, Affleck has definitely been embroiled in some questionable moments. He once admitted to lobbying television chiefs to hide his story in a documentary about his heritage.
Ben Affleck once issued a statement wherein he said he regretted trying to influence what went into the programme and was now glad that his family history would be part of the discussion about the impact of slavery in America.
“I didn’t want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves. I was embarrassed. The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth,” Ben Affleck said in a statement posted to Facebook in 2015.
The Batman Vs Superman actor went public and admitted that he had asked the producers of the television programme Finding Your Roots to take down information about the ancestor after Sony Pictures Entertainment emails were leaked online. The program’s producer, Harvard history professor Henry Louis Gates, was forced to issue a statement claiming he still maintained “editorial control” when the revelations ignited a censorship crisis in the US, as per The Guardian report.
Commentators additionally accused Ben Affleck of evading a subject that still dominates American culture and neglecting to confront the ghosts of his family’s past. Affleck claimed that Gates, whom he referred to as Skip, made the decisions on the show’s content. He admitted, “I lobbied him, in the same way I lobby directors about what takes of mine I think they should use.”
In response to comments below his apology, he denied accusations of censorship and stated that Henry Louis Gates had told him the initial cut had been removed since there wasn’t much information on his slave-owning ancestor. There was only “a name and no details”, wrote Affleck, “so he wasn’t going to go with it to begin with”.
