Actor Toby Jones has confirmed longstanding family beliefs about his South Asian heritage after uncovering new details during his research for the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?. Jones traced his ancestry back to the early 19th century and found evidence supporting his late father Freddie Jones’s conviction that their family includes Indian roots.

While exploring archival records, Toby Jones discovered that his great-great-great-grandmother, Mary, was identified as Indo-British on her 1821 marriage certificate, indicating at least one parent of Indian descent. This discovery substantiated what his father, who passed away in 2019, had long maintained. Growing up, Toby and his siblings often teased Freddie Jones for his belief in their “exotic bloodline,” viewing it as partly romantic speculation. Toby later acknowledged that his father felt a strong connection to Indian culture and heritage, which was a significant part of his identity.

Jones, known for his Bafta-winning performance in The Detectorists and his role in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, had only limited knowledge of his paternal lineage. Through his research, he learned that his great-great-grandmother Jane was born in India and that she married his great-great-grandfather John Jones, a British army private, in 1855. John Jones was stationed in Meerut, near Delhi, during a pivotal period in Indian history.

Further investigation revealed that John Jones enlisted in Newcastle-under-Lyme and embarked on a 500-mile journey on foot from Calcutta to his northern military post. He was among the first soldiers deployed to suppress the 1857 Uprising against British East India Company rule, now widely recognized as the First War of Indian Independence. Accompanying Toby on his visit to Meerut was author Gillian Wright, who provided historical context on John’s military service and migration.

The family history also contains somber elements. Toby uncovered that Jane, who was 31 in 1860, had previously been widowed, and all four children from her first marriage likely died young. Jane’s father, Samuel Burns, was also in the military, and an expert Toby met suggested that Samuel’s wife Mary was “most likely” of mixed British and Indian parentage.

A DNA test conducted for the program revealed that Toby Jones’s ancestry is predominantly English (87 percent), with approximately one percent Indian heritage. Jones expressed pride in this finding, acknowledging that it aligned with his father’s longstanding sense of identity. He described the process of uncovering his family’s past as “amazing” and expressed enthusiasm about sharing the story with his own children.

Jones’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? is scheduled to air on BBC1 at 9 p.m. on Thursday.