Valerie Bertinelli Discovered a Secret Uncle on ‘Finding Your Roots’

It was an emotional journey for Valerie Bertinelli on the latest episode of Finding Your Roots. The actress-turned-Food Network star came onto the show with questions about her grandfather, Nazzareno Bertinelli, and found out more than she could have bargained for.

Going into the program, all Valerie knew about her grandfather was that he immigrated to the United States from Italy in the 1920s. He was a strict man who didn't let her or her cousins watch Saturday morning cartoons and died when Valerie was a child. The Finding Your Roots team discovered that Nazzareno had a whole life in Italy that Valerie and her family had no idea about.

A week before the Nazzareno boarded the ship from Italy to America, he married a woman named Domenica, whom Valerie had never heard of. The Finding Your Roots research team also unearthed a newspaper clipping that revealed Domenica gave birth to a baby boy, Ernesto, in May 1923 – seven months after Nazzareno's departure. Ernesto was declared to be Nazzareno's son by Nazzareno's father in the local newspaper, making him Valerie's half-uncle.

Valerie revealed that she had found letters in her family home after her own father passed away, which she now believed to have been from Ernesto, who had tried to contact his American family. Ernesto died in Italy in 2004 and it was unclear whether he was ever able to meet his father or the rest of his family.

"I wonder if that ate at him and really bothered [Nazzareno]," Valerie contemplated on the show. "I am sad for the pain that [Ernesto and Domenica] went through, the sadness, the feeling of not being lovable enough to keep your father there. [That] isn’t true, but that is what a child goes to when a child is abandoned.” 

To add insult to injury, Valerie reviewed Nazzareno's marriage license to Angelina, the grandmother she grew up with, where he denied having any other previous marriage.

"I think what I am really doing in earnest right now is to have no judgment," Valerie explained. "Because I don't know what was going on with Nazzareno. I know that his life was incredibly difficult. I don't know if Domenica brought him joy. I don't know if Nazzareno brought Domenica joy, but they had a beautiful little boy, Ernesto, who seemed to me, wanted to reach out and spread some of his love. That all can't be bad."

Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr. commended Valerie Bertinelli for her positive outlook.