2023 Emmys Ties Record for Most Winning Actors of Color

Rebecca Sun
·5 min read
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The 2023 edition of the Emmys was its most diverse ever.

As the awards show celebrated its 75th anniversary, five of the 12 acting Emmys handed out on Monday night — pushed four months to Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a result of the 2023 strikes — went to performers of color, tying the record set at the 1991 ceremony, when Lynn Whitfield, Madge Sinclair and Ruby Dee took home statuettes (and James Earl Jones took home two).

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The show made history with its first two awards of the night, with wins for The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson marking the first time that the supporting and lead comedy actress Emmys both went to Black women in the same year. (The feat was previously accomplished in the drama races with Viola Davis and Uzo Aduba in 2015.) Brunson additionally is only the second Black woman ever to win for lead actress in a comedy series, after The Jefferson’s Isabel Sanford did it in 1981.

Niecy Nash-Betts was the third Black actress to win an Emmy on Monday night, in best supporting actress in a limited series, for Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. “I accept this award on behalf of every Black and brown woman who has gone unheard yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor,” said Nash-Betts, invoking her Dahmer character as well as two of the Black women whose death at the hands of law enforcement made headlines in recent years. “As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power and baby, I’m going to do it until the day I die.”

Unlike in 1991, artists of Asian descent contributed to the diversity of the results. Beef’s near-sweep in the limited series races (which included writing and directing wins for creator Lee Sung Jin) meant Emmys for its lead performers, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. The latter is the first Asian woman ever to earn an Emmy for a lead role.

In non-acting categories, RuPaul’s Drag Race host RuPaul extended his record for most decorated person of color in Emmys history (15 and counting). Last weekend at the Creative Arts Emmys, he also extended his winning streak for reality competition host to eight. And Trevor Noah became the first person from the global majority to front an Emmy-winning talk show, a Last Week Tonight-less category that has existed since 2015.

Despite the gains for Black and Asian artists, Latinos — the largest cultural minority group in the country — were shut out at yet another awards show. Four actors had been nominated: Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us), Jenna Ortega (Wednesday), Aubrey Plaza (The White Lotus) and Camila Morrone (Daisy Jones and the Six).

The Television Academy recognized GLAAD with its Governors Award for its pioneering and leading work pushing for fair, accurate and diverse representation of LGBTQ+ people. “What the world sees on TV influences how we treat each other and the decisions we make in our living rooms, schools, at work and at the ballot box,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “When you don’t know people, it’s easy to demonize them. Visibility creates understanding, and it opens doors. It’s life-saving.”

The first presenter of the night was Christina Applegate, who walked onstage with a cane, accompanied with a personal care assistant. “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up,” quipped the actress, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, waving off her standing ovation. Later, she said of her onstage companion, “I actually don’t need him here, he’s just really cute.”

RespectAbility vp entertainment and news media Lauren Appelbaum found Applegate’s attitude refreshing. “I really appreciated when she told the audience they don’t have to applaud every time she does something,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “She should receive recognition for her fantastic acting abilities, which she did by receiving a nomination.”

Appelbaum also noted that Applegate’s onstage presentation came right before the announcement of the category in which the Dead to Me star was nominated (lead actress in a comedy): “It wasn’t lost on me that she presented shortly before her nomination to ensure she would be backstage in an accessible location should she have won.”

Keeping with the theme of celebrating iconic television, the final presenter of the night was Game of Thrones alumnus Peter Dinklage, who has dwarfism and won four individual Emmys for playing Tyrion Lannister on the show.

“This is also a day to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by bringing you a moment from his most famous speech, voted by the Television Academy as one of the most impactful moments in television history,” said Emmys host Anthony Anderson, who earlier introduced salutes to Good Times, Martin and The Arsenio Hall Show, in signing off:

“When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’”

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