Did you know Simpson, Tyson, Asner, Amos were in 1977 ‘Roots’?

History’s four-night “Roots” remake that premiered Monday boasts a star-studded cast: Forest Whitaker, Derek Luke and Matthew Goode were in the first episode. Anika Noni Rose, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne and rapper T.I. will appear in subsequent installments.

And although the original 1977 miniseries was known for launching the career of LeVar Burton, who played a young Kunta Kinte, it also featured many other celebrities you may have forgotten were in it.

Cicely Tyson played Kinte’s mother, Binta. John Amos (of “Good Times” fame) appeared as the adult Kinte.

ABC was nervous that Americans would not continue watching if familiar white actors were not a part of the production, so Ed Asner appears early in the original as a morally conflicted slave ship captain (opposite a sinister Ralph Waite, known for his role in “The Waltons,” as the ship’s third mate). Robert Reed, known to many as Mike Brady, the friendly father in “The Brady Bunch,” played slave master William Reynolds. The remake focuses a lot less attention on white characters.

Maya Angelou, the celebrated poet, had a cameo in night one as Kunta Kinte’s no-nonsense grandmother.

“Now that you are a man, what will you do?” she says. “Sit under that tree with the other men and make important decisions?”

Tracey Gold, later of “Growing Pains,” appeared briefly as a young Missy Reynolds, the daughter of Kinte’s original slave master, whose paternity was a source of gossip on her family’s plantation.

And O.J. Simpson was at the tail end of his football career when he made a brief appearance on night one of the miniseries. Simpson appears as Kadi Touray, an African man, traveling through Kinte’s hometown with his family. Touray chases an overzealous Kinte after the young man runs into Touray’s daughter (literally) while undergoing his Mandinka warrior training in Gambia, West Africa.