Adele, Eminem, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr Now Only Need Tony Awards to Reach EGOT Status
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After victories at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony this weekend, musicians Adele, Eminem, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are one step closer to reaching EGOT status.
On Saturday, Adele, 34, scored her first Emmy Award in the variety special (pre-recorded) category for Adele: One Night Only.
Eminem, 49, won the best variety special (live) award for his appearance at the Super Bowl halftime show this year, while McCartney, 80, and Starr, 82, both received an Emmy in the documentary/nonfiction category for their roles as producers of The Beatles: Get Back.
All four musicians, who were already winners of Oscars and Grammys before Saturday, are now just one award shy of earning the coveted EGOT status, should they be able to earn themselves a Tony Award in the future.
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Representing the top awards in television (Emmy), music (Grammy), film (Oscar) and theater (Tony), the EGOT is considered the grand slam of show business — a four-of-a-kind sweep that only the rarest of stars have been able to achieve.
The term was coined by Miami Vice actor Philip Michael Thomas, who first told it to the Associated Press in 1984 at the height of the NBC action show's success. "That stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony," he said at the time. "Hopefully in the next five years, I will win all those awards."
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To date, 17 people have picked up the honor: Richard Rodgers (1962), Helen Hayes (1977), Rita Moreno (1977), John Gielgud (1991), Audrey Hepburn (1994), Marvin Hamlisch (1995), Jonathan Tunick (1997), Mel Brooks (2001), Mike Nichols (2001), Whoopi Goldberg (2002), Scott Rudin (2012), Robert Lopez (2014), Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018), Tim Rice (2018), John Legend (2018), Alan Menken (2020), and Jennifer Hudson (2022).
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In addition to Adele, Eminem, Starr, and McCartney, there are 28 other talents who are on the same boat, just one Tony Award away from achieving the Hollywood honor.
Twenty-two of those individuals are still alive, including composer Kristen Anderson-Lopez, actress Julie Andrews, composer Burt Bacharach, composer Alan Bergman, actress Cher, composer and producer Common, composer Michael Giacchino, director and producer Alex Gibney, sound editor Alex Gibson, composer Ludwig Goransson, producer Brian Grazer, composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, producer/director Ron Howard, director James Moll, director and producer Morgan Neville, composer Randy Newman, composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, director/producer Martin Scorsese, composer John Williams, actress Kate Winslet and actress/musician Barbra Streisand.
Streisand, 80, received an honorary "Star of the Decade" Tony Award in 1970, though it did not count as a winner to receive the status of an EGOT champion, according to Gold Derby.
The other six have died. They include composer John Addison, composer Marilyn Bergman, actor George Burns, composer Sid Ramin, actor Peter Ustinov and actor Robin Williams.
