There aren’t many surprises in a marriage, but finding out you’re distantly related to your spouse is definitely one of them.
This was the case for Kevin Bacon, 66, and his wife Kyra Sedgwick, 58, who discovered they’re actually cousins.
The surprising moment unfolded on TV when the Footloose actor decided to trace his family tree.
The two fell deeply in love after collaborating on the 1988 film Lemon Sky.
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have been married for more than 35 years.Getty Images
Bacon and Sedgwick tied the knot that same year and eventually had two children together.
However, during a 2013 episode of Finding Your Roots, Sedgwick learned that her husband, Bacon, is actually her distant cousin.
This American show helps people trace their ancestry, similar to the British series Who Do You Think You Are?
On Finding Your Roots, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Sedgwick with a photo of her ninth cousin once removed and revealed the surprising news: “And his name is Kevin Bacon.”
Sedgwick, who had previously voiced concerns that the show would reveal their relationship, responded as follows: “See. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”
However, she added: “As long as we’re not first cousins, it’s fine.”
Bacon is informed elsewhere in the program: “You and Brad Pitt are 13th cousins twice removed.”
“You and President Obama share a common ancestor named Anthony Woolhouse. You are 12th cousins, three times removed.”
“No kidding. I knew I wasn’t getting enough respect,” the actor responded.
The couple discovered they were actually distant cousins.WireImage
Bacon has publicly acknowledged that at first he thought the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” was a joke about him and didn’t appreciate the premise.
The premise of the game is that almost every member of the film industry may be connected to Bacon in six steps or less based on their roles in movies.
Last year, during an interview with the On With Mario Lopez podcast, he clarified: “I was horrified! Because I thought it was really a joke at my expense. I just thought, ‘Oh come on, they’re just making fun of me, let’s face it!’”
Bacon continues by describing how he initially became aware of the game: “I heard about it, people would come up to me and say, ‘My cousin invented a game about you,’ or, ‘I’m so hungover, I was playing your game last night’. I had no idea what they were talking about, I was like, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong guy.’”
The star continued, stating that he had thought the game would have become dead by now, but it is still played widely.
“It’s hard to imagine, but we didn’t have the same – if something went viral, we didn’t really use that word,” Bacon said.
“Viral was a virus, it wasn’t an idea! But it spread and spread and spread, and I honestly thought it was gonna go away, and it just didn’t go away!”
