Long Lost Family (Series 11)

PRESS PACK

Strictly embargoed until Tuesday 29 June 2021

Long Lost Family

TX Monday 5 July 2021 9pm (TBC) Embargoed until Tuesday 29 June 2021

The multi award-winning series returns with more extraordinary and moving stories of people desperate to find missing family.

With help from a team of trained intermediaries, DNA experts and investigators, presenters Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall find people that previously couldn't be traced and answer questions that have haunted entire lives.

Across 10 brand new episodes, the team takes on some astonishing searches. From an international and premiership footballer looking for his birth mother after recovering from a brain tumour, to a man needing the truth about why he was left as a three-month-old baby in a pram on the street.

Even in its 11th series, there are firsts for Long Lost Family; the programme’s oldest ever searcher, an 86-year-old father looking for the daughter he was separated from and the first time the team have searched for a long-lost foster brother.

As Long Lost Family demonstrates year on year, knowing your roots and being in touch with family is incredibly important. And with many viewers having been separated from their loved ones during the pandemic, the series remains immensely poignant.

Episode One

Episode One features two stories of children searching for their birth mothers after life-changing events.

The first story is on behalf of a former premiership footballer who, after suffering a huge health scare, is compelled to find his birth mother.

“I was fighting for my life this time last year….I was just thinking about meeting my birth mother. When you’re close to your life being over, it becomes more important.” Dominic Matteo

46-year-old Dominic Matteo’s world was turned upside down in 2019 when he was diagnosed with a rare, cancerous brain tumour. It was during this time that he realised how precious life was. After a miraculous recovery, and with the help of his wife Jess, Dominic is on a mission to find his birth mother, who put him up for adoption 46 years ago.

Dominic was told he was adopted when he was a child. He didn’t quite believe it at first. He recalls: “It was a very slow process for me to take it in. And I was maybe a little bit in denial.”

Until now, Dominic has never spoken about his adoption. He says: “I’ve kept it quiet because it’s very, very personal to me,” but his life-threatening illness made him realise what’s important and his family are all fully supportive of his search.

“We’ve been talking to the kids about my adoption, and they know we’re looking for my birth mother…I want to find her because I want to make sure she’s alright.”

Dominic’s birth mother Margaret is found living in Scotland. When Nicky meets her, she reveals she has actually seen Dominic playing football for Scotland on TV and had no idea he was her son. She says: “Do you know, when I said goodbye to him, his wee finger in my hand, I thought ‘you’re gonna do well’, but this is doing very well!”

Margaret tells Nicky how happy she is to have been found: “After all this time, 46 years, I’m quite emotional about it…. I’ve never stopped thinking about him… he’s a part of me, who I am.”

Davina is then able to tell Dominic the joyous news that his birth mother has been found and Margaret travels down to Halifax to be reunited with her son.

An overjoyed Dominic says: “I feel like I wanna smile today…I’ve had some tough times over the last year or so, so it’s nice to be in this position now and to be happy. And we can be happy together.”

The second search is on behalf of a woman who was hit with emotion on her wedding day, thinking about her missing birth mother.

Lisa Phillips has decided the time is right to search for her birth mother. She’s had unanswered questions ever since she was told she was adopted at the age of seven, but it was on her wedding day in 1992 that it really hit home that there was one person absent.

Lisa says: “It was a big traditional white wedding. All day my heart was aching because my birth mother wasn’t there.”

As an adult, Lisa accessed her adoption file and found out her birth mother’s name, Susan Gale, and some details about what she looked like. She gained comfort discovering where she had inherited her physical appearance from: “I was thinking I've got something in common, it was wonderful…I loved reading it.”

But Lisa didn’t pursue a search because she didn’t want to hurt her adoptive father, who was scared of losing her. Lisa explains that she could speak to her adoptive mum, but not her dad: “My mum was always: ‘I know there’s going to be a day when you will want to find out more about your birth history’. But you’d try and mention it with my dad and he would get upset.”

Now, with her adoptive father poorly with dementia, Lisa feels that time is running out; she wants her adoptive parents to meet her birth mother and she would love to share her life with all of them for as long as she can.

Lisa says: “I can’t leave it any longer. I need that connection. I want that connection. I need her sat opposite me. I need - ‘I’ll hold your hand and I am not letting go of you’.”

The search is not straightforward as Susan married more than once meaning her name changed several times, but the team successfully trace her to Southampton where she lives.

When Nicky meets Susan, it is quickly apparent that she has longed for her first-born daughter every day of her life and even named her subsequent daughter after her. She tells Nicky: “[I] loved her every day, and she was never shoved in the background, everybody knew about her.”

Susan explains that when Lisa was born, she was living in a small two-bedroom house with her whole family. There was no room for a cot and Susan believed the best option for her daughter’s well-being was for her to be adopted: “She deserved more. It wasn’t her fault. I wanted her to have a mum and dad that was going to love her and bring her up and hopefully have a good childhood and a happy life.”

Davina tells Lisa that she’s never been a secret within her birth family and Lisa is finally reunited with her birth mother in London near to where she was born. “Fifty years I’ve waited for this moment”, her birth mother Susan says. Lisa also meets her brother and sister, who was named “Lisa” after her. She is then able to introduce her birth mother to her adoptive parents and concludes “My life is complete now. She’s made me complete.”

Produced by Wall to Wall for ITV.

Press Contacts Lyndsey Large (Mon-Tues) Lyndsey.Large@itv.com Hannah Green (Weds - Fri) [email protected] Pictures: Peter Gray [email protected]

Davina McCall – Press Pack Interview

Strictly embargoed until Tuesday 29 June

Congratulations on the BAFTA win for Born Without Trace – how did it feel for the programme to be recognised in that way?

“It was very unexpected. So even more lovely! I can't tell you the care and attention that goes into making this series. Our contributors trust us with their life stories and we take that responsibility very, very seriously. All of us. So this means so much to all of us involved. It’s just really lovely for all of our team, who are so good at what they do, to get this recognition. Because they so deserve it.”

Incredibly this is series 11 of the main Long Lost Family series, you must be proud of its enduring success? Does it still surprise you?

“It was interesting, because I thought COVID would make this series hard to film. But, actually, it made it all the more poignant and pertinent. Nicky and I are so proud to be part of it. The reason it’s still going is because, even though the theme of people looking for each other is still the same, every episode is different, because we as people are all so different.”

What can viewers expect from the new series?

“We have a father searching for his daughter, I think I’d be right in saying he is our oldest ever contributor, and such a lovely man. There is a search for a sister and a foster brother, just because someone is not biologically related to you does not make the bond any less. In our first episode, Dominic Matteo is searching for his birth mother. Having battled a brain tumour in 2019, this has become so much more important.”

What can you tell us about Dominic’s story? Do you think his brain tumour illness was the driving factor for his need to search for his mum?

“Yes, it totally was. Dominic and his family are such warm, wonderful people. He really has been through so much, as has his wife. Family is everything to him. But at the heart of it he just wants to make sure his birth mother is alright.”

Can you tell us about Lisa’s story (ep1)?

“Lisa is such a wonderful woman. Adoptive parents (I only say adoptive as on this series we are often talking about birth parents too, so it is good to qualify, but I am always aware that the adoptive parents are the parents!), sometimes struggle with the idea of their children seeking out their birth parents. Which stops them from looking. Lisa realised that she wanted to find her birth mother on her wedding day and really wants to introduce her to her mum and dad.”

Which other stories in this series had the biggest impact on you?

“I really loved the search for a foster brother. He made such a huge impact. And Roy, our oldest searcher, was worried that time was running out – a heart-breaking story of a man unsure about how to trace his daughter after they moved. There are so many incredible moments in this series and they are all very different, but equally powerful.”

Nicky Campbell – Press Pack Interview

Strictly embargoed until Tuesday 29 June

Congratulations on the BAFTA win for Born Without Trace!

“It was an incredible feeling. But to be honest, when you win these things, we didn’t really feel like it was us winning. With this programme it’s all about the people who have come to us for help and we’ve have found answers and they have given inspiration to others. It’s brilliant to win and the team work really hard. It’s a fantastic team. But we’re always minded that we are ultimately facilitating these stories and people’s lives. The programme is nothing without the people who come to us.”

Incredibly this is series 11 of the main LLF series, you must be proud of its enduring success?

“It’s unbelievable. When we did the first series and the very first episode went out, I was in New York for my 50th birthday. I woke up and there were all these amazing texts and messages.

Also, texts from Davina saying, ‘Oh my god, look what happened!’ Because social media was just rammed. We knew we had something unique in this series but from the immediate reaction we could tell then that we had something really special, that really resonated with people.”

What can viewers expect from the new series?

“Many more fascinating stories. Also, it’s unique given the time we are all living in. The fact that some of the reunions had to be done on zoom or at a distance, almost made them more powerful. We obviously had to follow the guidelines for filming as they were at the time of each reunion, in terms of social distancing and so on. In some cases, people were able to choose to take Covid tests to enable them to embrace if they wanted to. But there were a couple of reunions where they couldn’t touch each other or hug, and those were some of the most powerful reunions that we’ve had, that pent up emotion into an explosion of emotion, it was amazing.”

What can you tell us about Dominic Matteo’s story (ep1)?

“Dominic’s search for his birth mother was driven by his recovery from a brain tumour and it was clearly a life-changing moment for him. Life-changing moments like that, sometimes it’s an illness, sometimes it’s a child being born, sometimes it’s a relationship finishing, they make you just start to assess the world in a different way. Very often it spurs people to seek answers, because it makes you think about everything afresh. If you’re ill for example it makes you think, ‘Well, we’re not here for long, we are all so fragile’. Those experiences make you wonder about things beyond yourself and there is no greater thing than finding out who you are and who gave birth to you. It does make you think very profoundly and that sense of, ‘I’ve got to do this now, I’ve got to find that person’. Because if you wait much longer, life can pass you by.”

How did it feel to tell his mum that her son played football for Scotland?!

“I’ll never forget the look on her face. Imagine the pride of having a son and wanting to know what he’s done, and she’d have been proud of him whatever he’d done in life - I remember her saying that, of course. But just that extra thing of him playing for his country as a professional footballer. Just wonderful. I loved that story because I’m a football fan and a Scotland fan and Dominic was a great player. So it was really exciting for me to have that aspect of it and I’m so pleased that he came to us and we were able to find answers for him.”

In both ep 1 stories there is a sense that the mother’s giving up their babies for adoption was the ultimate act of love – Lisa’s mum described the pain of giving her up but said, ‘She deserved more’ and similar with Dominic’s mum?

“I think one of the best things about this, one of the most wonderful things is that you’re bringing peace of mind to people. Very often the emphasis of it when we speak about it, is towards those who are searching. But these two mothers have lost so much in their life, and it brings them peace of mind as well. It opens a door but it also closes a door on the past. It’s a new start and whatever happens in their ongoing relationship, they’re not going to wake up in the middle of the night anymore and think, where is he? Is he still alive? Did he have a good life? Did he have a good adoption? What is he doing now? Because now they’ll know. And that’s transformative. That’s revolutionary in someone’s life.”

Ep 1 also raises the issue of the difficulty often faced by people not wanting to upset their adoptive parents, by searching for their birth parents?

“It is difficult, I wrote about this in my book. It’s difficult because you feel torn, you feel that sense of loyalty. But also, if you don’t search, you feel a sort of disloyalty to yourself, because you feel that ultimately everyone deserves answers and everyone deserves to know where they came from. You are torn every which way and I could completely relate to that. I was very lucky that my mum encouraged it and realised how important it was for peace of mind. But it’s very difficult because the whole equation of your life changes, you move onto a new dimension. So in a sense you are very brave to do it, and it takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of understanding. But I completely understand the feeling of disloyalty because perhaps you’ve had a brilliant adoption, like Lisa had. But it’s better to do it than not to do it, because you don’t want to go through the rest of your life thinking, ‘I wish I had, I wish I’d known’.”

Which other stories in this series had the biggest impact on you?

“We have our oldest ever searcher, Roy, who is 86-years-old. To want to search at that stage of life just shows that you never get over wanting those answers, it’s something that you just have to have. We found Roy’s daughter in New York and I loved that story. We then found a further sibling and without giving too much away, it was amazing putting them all together. I love stories like that, when one thing leads onto another and it all kind of makes sense in the end. You can’t get better than that - it all making sense in the end. That’s what we all strive for in life, isn’t it?!”

Please credit: ‘The new series of Long Lost Family starts Mon 5 July at 9pm on ITV (TBC)’

Press Contacts Lyndsey Large (Mon-Tues) [email protected] Hannah Green (Weds - Fri) [email protected] Pictures: Peter Gray [email protected]