Bill Hader had no idea he was related to Carol Burnett until she told him

‘It’s insane! She emailed me and said, “We’re related,”’ the ‘Barry’ star remembered

Bill Hader recently received the shocking news of his distant relation to fellow acting legend Carol Burnett.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday 13 April, the Barry star recounted the moment Burnett emailed him informing him that they are distant cousins.

“It’s insane,” Hader recalled. “She emailed me and said, ‘We’re related.’

“And I was like, ‘What?’ and I turned to my daughters and I’m like, ‘We’re related to Miss Hannigan!’”

Burnett, 89, who played the formidable orphanage owner Miss Hannigan in the original 1982 musical film Annie, discovered her bloodline connection with Hader on Finding Your Roots.

The PBS docuseries connects celebrities with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, who helps them trace their DNA lineage to learn about their ancestrial history.

After discussing the coincidental revelation, Kimmel played a clip from an old interview of a younger Hader confessing he had a “huge crush on Carol Burnett”.

Reacting to the clip, Hader laughed: “You can take the boy out of Oklahoma, you know what I’m saying. I knew there was something about her.”

Ironically, Hader was featured on the third season of the PBS show in 2019.

“Well, the big thing about Finding Your Roots is you do it and they’re like, ‘You are related to someone who fought in the Civil War,’” the 44-year-old SNL alum joked.

“And you’re like, ‘Uh huh,’ and you’re like, ‘Please be on the Union,’ and they go, ‘And they were born in Missouri,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh s***.’

“It’s the worst thing ever, where you’re like, ‘Why are you drawing this out?’” Hader quipped.

The fourth and final season of the actor’s Emmy-winning show, Barry, airs on Sundays on HBO Max in the US and the following Mondays on Sky and NOW in the UK.

Read The Independent’s five-star review of the season here.