BAFTA-winning actor Toby Jones will trace his family history on next week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, airing on BBC One at 9pm on Thursday 16 July 2026.
At the start of the episode, Toby says that his father, the Emmerdale actor Freddie Jones, was “absolutely convinced” he had Indian ancestry, which the rest of his family “slightly took the mickey out of”.
Toby says he thinks it was because his father was “a romantic” who “loved other cultures”. To find out if the rumour is true or not, his episode sees him travel to Meerut in India, where he discovers that an ancestor was a soldier who fought in the Indian Mutiny and takes a DNA test to find out if he really does have Indian ancestry.
Toby’s mother, Jennie Heslewood, was also an actor. He also investigates a long theatrical line in her family and discovers that her 2x great grandmother Sarah Thorne founded one of Britain’s first acting schools.
