The Myths And Realities of Peak TV: Emmys Edition (2100th Post)
How A Trickle Of Roles for Prominent African-Americans Led To The Gusher of Diversity in Emmy Recognition Over The Last Decade
When Glenn Close accepted her second consecutive Emmy for Damages in 2009 she expressed how humble she was to be among such brilliant actresses. This was not false humility; just the year before it had become increasingly apparently to critics and audiences just how rewarding TV drama could be to actresses of a certain age.
In the fall of 2008 Entertainment Weekly had paid tribute to Close and three of her fellow nominees as a symbol of the great roles for actresses TV was providing. In addition to Close included were Sally Field for her work as Nora Walker on Brothers & Sisters, Kyra Sedgwick for playing Brenda Johnson on The Closer and Holly Hunter for her searing portrayal of the hard drinking, very sexual Grace Hanadarko on Saving Grace. All but Hunter would win Emmys for their work over their tenure on the show and they represented an alternative to the kinds of White Male Antagonists that were even then dominated the genre.
Never nominated for Emmys but just as impressive were Mary McConnell as President Laura Roslin on the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, Anna Paquin for her work as Sookie on True Blood and Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloe Sevigny as two very different sister wives on Big Love. (Paquin and Sevigny did win Golden Globes.) Nor were these kinds of roles only available for drama. Ever since Mary Louise Parker had won a Golden Globes for Weeds in 2005, a new kind of series — the dramedy — had become prominent on pay cable and the vast majority of them were female-centric. Showtime was the most prominent purveyor of them and in the years following Weeds Toni Collette and Laura Linney would win Golden Globes and Emmys for their exceptional work on United States of Tara and The Big C. HBO visited the genre too, most significantly with Mike White’s Enlightened featuring Laura Dern at the start of what has been an exceptional career in television.
Less noticed while this was occurring was the slow migration of prominent African-American actress to television in series roles. Regina King, whose career in the movies had sputter during the 2000s had migrated to television, first in a small role in Day 6 of 24 and then to immense critical acclaim in the TNT cop drama Southland. King received multiple award nominations, including her first two Critics Choice nods. Taraji P. Henson, whose career in films had featured work in such exceptional movies as Talk to Me, Hustle & Flow and an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actress for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, had worked on an off in TV for much of the 2000s in cable dramas like The Division and one season on Boston Legal. In 2011 she returned to television as Joss Carter on Person of Interest, the NYPD detective who chases down ‘the man in the suit’ and battles a corrupt organization within the NYPD. The year after Viola Davis received her first Oscar nomination for Doubt her next major role was as a comic book designer on United States of Tara.
But all of this would likely have been unnoticed had it not been for the debut of Scandal in 2012. And here I have to do something I wouldn’t do under normal circumstances but nevertheless must: praise Shonda Rhimes.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think that her shows are absolute drivel, pure soap opera with no nutritional value. That doesn’t change the impact she’s made on the industry. Because by the end of the 2000s, it was becoming clear to everyone who white TV was. I remember an Entertainment Weekly article in 2009 with a picture of Cleveland from Family Guy with the headline: “Why is this the only person of color starring in a network show this fall?” And yes, in the opening paragraph they did remind us that he was voiced by Seth McFarlane. It wasn’t just the Emmys where it was clear how white the TV industry was.
Shonda Rhimes was the only woman of color who was a success in television during the 2000s. Even that strikes me as remarkable considering just how hard it was for white women to be able to run shows by the 2000s. I only know of three during that decade: Jenji Kohan for Weeds, Amy Sherman-Palladino for Gilmore Girls and Tina Fey for 30 Rock.
By the start of the 2010s, there was a clamor for diversity throughout the industry from minority voices that the power structure had made it very clear they had no intention of listening to. It’s possible, even likely, Rhimes wanted to do a series similar to Scandal from the start of her career but she had to know how precarious her place in the industry was. I have a feeling that whenever Rowan Pope lectures his daughter on how: “We have to work twice as hard to get half as much” he was putting into words something Rhimes had to have been told her whole life. (Although both Popes seemed perfectly fine using their power to uphold the white power structure in America…I’m sorry this is about praising Rhimes, not bashing her shows.)
And Rhimes had to play the long game. First Grey’s Anatomy became a smash, then she developed the spinoff Private Practice. Then she did executive produced a series called Off The Map which was canceled after five seasons. It was only in 2012 her eighth year working with ABC that she had enough power and clout in the industry to get Scandal greenlit.
And to be clear, it could have died very quickly. The first season was not warmly received by critics or watched with anywhere near the fervor of either of her successes, even though it followed Grey’s Anatomy. The show was on the bubble in May of 2012 and I think it’s only because the network had more confidence in Rhimes then the series that they renewed it. Then the show took off and Olivia Pope saying ‘it’s handled’ became a household word.
Kerry Washington was slightly younger then most of the actress I mentioned above. Her career in films had been a mixed bag: there had been Oscar nominated films like Ray and Django Unchained and utter disasters like Little Man, A Thousand Words and She Hate Me. So when she became the first African-American woman to be the lead of a network series in nearly twenty years, the pressure must been incredible. When Washington became the first African-American actress to receive an Emmy nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Drama since Cicely Tyson in 1995 it was a earth shaking moment. But because the entire world was focused on the final seasons of Breaking Bad (which played out during both years Washington was nominated in this category) because the world of television had been upended by Netflix’s arrival with House of Cards in 2013 and Orange is the New Black in 2014 and more directly, because network television was increasingly being considered passe when it came to providing quality TV, no one recognized the significance of Washington’s nominations.
What mattered was that the ceiling had been cracked and that the networks now knew that there could be rewards for taking these risks. By 2014 network television would provide its last great gift to the revolution by helping shatter the diversity barrier in the Emmys for good.
In the 2014–2015 season, three different network television shows would provide groundbreaking roles for the three African-American women I mentioned above. Davis was the first. Shondaland would cast Davis to play Annalyse Keating in How To Get Away With Murder and regardless of my feelings for the show and all things Shondaland, it’s hard to complain about what it did for Davis’s career. Davis had been working in both Broadway and films for more than two decades and a fair amount of TV as well. She’d had a regular role on the 2000 series City of Angels had a recurring role in Tom Selleck’s Jesse Stone movies and had a regular role in ABC’s Traveler before her work in United States of Tara. She won multiple Tonys and had received two Oscar nominations for Doubt and The Help. Even the immense success of the latter did nothing to improve the kind of roles she got.
How To Get Away With Murder allowed her to play a different kind of character. She had spent much of her career playing carers and mothers. Annalyse was ruthless in a way even Olivia Pope wasn’t. This role gave Davis to tap a layer of darkness she’d never been allowed to in her entire career and it worked for her.
Taraji P. Henson, meanwhile, had died shockingly on Person of Interest (it’s still one of the most shocking character deaths in TV history) but she wasn’t out of work long. Within months she was cast as Cookie Lyon the ex-wife of a record label baron who has just been released from prison after nineteen years and inserts herself whole-heartedly into the battle over control of it in the Fox series Empire. This show was over the top in the way not even Shondaland series could be but Henson tore into the role with a complete lack of restraint that audiences immediately embraced.
And after How To Get Away With Murder ended its first season an entirely different kind of series took its slow on Thursday nights at 10. John Ridley’s American Crime was one of the most brilliant accomplishments of television in the last ten years, with perhaps the most brutal and brilliant look at the way our society doesn’t function on our most prominent issues — race, sexual harassment, immigration — through the lens of a single crime and the ripples that run through an entire community as a result. The series would employ a handful of extremely gifted film and TV actors to play different roles throughout the series and most of them had been among the greatest successes in TV during the period: Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Benito Martinez and Lili Taylor worked in every season but the highpoint of that series was Regina King’s work in three very different roles.
In 2015 for the first time in history, the Emmys nominated two African-American actresses for Best Lead Actress in a drama: Davis and Hanson. When Davis won Hanson embraced her as she walked down the aisle. (Both would receive Golden Globes for their work.) King would win the first of two consecutive Emmys for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series. Combined with Uzo Aduba win for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for Orange is the New Black (she had won the previous year for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy) the 2015 Emmys had made history when it came to recognizing women of color in acting.
Just as significant was the presence of African-Americans in the comedy category. In addition to Don Cheadle being nominated for his work in House of Lies, Anthony Anderson had been nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy for black-ish. Andre Braugher and Tituss Burgess had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor playing two very different African-American gay men and Niecy Nash had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for Getting On, the HBO black comedy set in a hospice.
And though no one yet knew what the significance would be in the era of Limited Series Richard Cabral had been nominated for his work in American Crime along with King and Angela Bassett (another prominent African-American actress who had also shifted from film to TV) was nominated for her work in American Horror Story: Freak Show. (Four other actors of color were nominated in the Limited Series acting categories but all of them were for films and therefore I don’t quantify under the same rubric I will later on. Still it is significant such prominent television actors as Michael K. Williams and a former Oscar winner Mo’Nique were nominated.)
The dam holding back actors of color at the Emmys had cracked. By the end of the decade it was completely gone.
In 2016 for the first time since Roots had dominated the 1977 Emmys three of the four winners in Acting in a Limited Series were African-American. But significantly only two of the winners — Courtney B. Vance and Sterling K. Brown — were for the same limited series the groundbreaking The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Regina King won her second consecutive Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series for the second season of American Crime.
Henson and Davis repeated their nominations in Best Actress in a Drama (they were defeated by Tatiana Maslany in a long overdue win for Orphan Black) and all the previous nominees of color from 2015 in drama and comedy duplicated their appearances from the previous year with the notable addition of Tracee Ellis Ross for black-ish. Just as significant was the presence of Aziz Ansari an Indian born actor who had been the star and creative force behind the brilliant Netflix series Master of None. That year he and Alan Yang became the first people Asian descent to win an Emmy for Best Writing in comedy — or indeed any Emmy category, defeating the winner for Best Comedy Veep in this category.
In the Best Actor in a Limited Series category, three of the nominees were African-American: Vance, his co-star Cuba Gooding Jr and Idris Elba for the latest season of Luther. Kerry Washington had been ignored for Scandal but was nominated for Best Actress in a TV Movie/Limited Series for playing Anita Hill in Confirmation. The noted character actor Bokeem Woodbine had received his first Emmy nomination for his work in Fargo.
The next year actors of color took over the drama category as never before. Sterling K. Brown took the Emmy for Best Actor for his work as Randall in This is Us. Not only was he the first African-American to win consecutive Emmys in completely different categories, he was the first African-American Actor to win in this category since Andre Braugher had in 1998 — a fact he name-checked when he took his win. Ron Cephas Jones was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and while he didn’t win, he would later win two Guest Actor Emmys for his role in This Is Us. Westworld allowed Jeffrey Wright and Thandie Newton to entire the ranks — Newton was another actress who had turned to television after her film career had been struggling. Newton was nominated along with Uzo Aduba and Samira Wiley for The Handmaid’s Tale the big winner of Emmy night 2017.
In comedy Donald Glover became the first African-American in more than thirty years to win Best Actor in a Comedy for his groundbreaking series Atlanta. Leslie Jones would be nominated for her work on Saturday Night Live (she would lose to her co-star Kate McKinnon.) Significantly Ansari would repeat his win for in Writing in a Comedy with his co-writer being Lena Waithe, the first woman of color to ever win an Emmy for writing. While the Limited Series category was deservedly dominated by Big Little Lies that year Riz Ahmed became the first performer of Muslim descent to win an Emmy for his work in The Night Of.
2018 by comparison was a step down in its groundbreaking wins but that didn’t mean that their weren’t significant ones. Issa Rae received her first acting and writing nominations for the brilliant HBO series Insecure and Donald Glover was nominated for multiple awards for the incredible ‘Teddy Perkins’ episode of Atlanta. His co-stars Bryan Tyree Henry and Zazie Beetz received nominations as well. Brown and Wright were both nominated for Best Actor in a Drama — the first time two African-Americans had ever been nominated as leads in this category — though both lost to Matthew Rhys for The Americans. (No argument on my part.) Sandra Oh became the first Korean-American nominated for Best Actress in a Drama for Killing Eve. And Thandiwe Newton prevailed over the many women in The Handmaid’s Tale to take Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for Westworld. The previous winner Aduba had been three years earlier. Prior to that, there hadn’t been ab African-American winner in this category for more than twenty two years when Mary Alice had won for I’ll Fly Away.
Regina King won her third Emmy in four years in the Limited Series category, this time for Best Actress in Seven Seconds. But perhaps the most significant win of the night were the wins for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which took eight Emmys including three for Amy Sherman-Palladino for writing, directing and producing. While many women had won Emmys in multiple categories in recent years including Tina Fey for 30 Rock, Sherman-Palladino was the first woman to do so in all three categories in Emmy history.
The next year Phoebe Waller-Bridge joined her on that list when Fleabag became the biggest winner in comedy. Waller-Bridge took every prize she was nominated for: Actress, writing and Best Comedy. Nor was she the only hyphenate in the comedy category: Natasha Lyonne was nominated for acting and show-running Netflix’s Russian Doll. Combined with Sherman-Palladino’s presence for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, women had taken charge in the creative forces in comedy Emmys in a way that they never had before.
Also in 2019 Ava Duvernay became the first African-American woman When They See Us became the first limited series to receive multiple nominations for writing, directing and producing a limited series. As a result seven performers of color — six from When They See Us alone — were nominated in the Limited Series acting categories with Jharrel Jerome triumphing for Best Actor in a Limited Series.
But more significant by far was Billy Porter’s win for Pose. Throughout the 21st century, many gay and lesbian performers had been nominated and won multiple awards, including Kate McKinnon, Jane Lynch and Jim Parsons but not since Sean Hayes for Will & Grace had any of them been playing a gay or lesbian character. Porter was the first African-American gay man to win for the groundbreaking Pose a series that featured entirely members of the LGBTQ+ African-American community, a genre that to this point in Peak TV had been basically ignored.
This could not have been achieved without the diligence of Ryan Murphy. Ever since the debut of Glee in 2010, Murphy’s work had become the greatest source of work for actors in the LGBTQ+ community. He had dealt with the subject multiple times in both his American Horror Story franchise and more critically in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. The latter series had seen nomination for Ricky Martin, playing the title characters longtime companion. He had been a great source for nominees of color for Horror Story over the decade. Pose was the last official series he did before moving to Netflix where in such series as Hollywood and last year’s Dahmer he would continue to provide groundbreaking roles for African-American members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Because the world was not only in lockdown but in crisis, few noted the immense amount of diversity on display at the 2020 Emmys. Three of the nominees for Best Comedy Series were written and produced by women and the biggest winner Schitt’s Creek which managed the first clean sweep of every major category on Emmy night, was the work of Dan Levy. Dan Levy was the first gay man to win for both acting and writing in Emmy history on what was a triumph for his family. Issa Rae was nominated for three Emmys that night for Insecure. Ramy Youseff, an American born Muslim was nominated for writing and acting in his Hulu comedy series Ramy. The comedy categories alone had nine African-American acting nominees. It was a different world from just six years earlier. That year Zendaya became the first bi-racial actress to win an Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama for her work in Euphoria.
Of the twenty two acting nominees in the Best limited Series category seven were African-American. On Emmy night for second time in five years, three of the winners were African-American. Regina King took her fourth Emmy in six years, Uzo Aduba won her third Supporting Actress for her work as Shirley Chisholm in Mrs. America becoming the first African-American to win an Emmy in Comedy, Drama and Limited Series/TV Movie. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II took the Supporting Actor Emmy for Watchmen by far the biggest winner of Emmy night 2020. Cord Jefferson won for Writing, three years before he won an Academy Award for American Fiction.
By this point the Emmys had become so diverse that when in 2021 no African-American actor won an Emmy for acting in 2021 the hashtag #EmmysSoWhite immediately circulated. Considering how much progress there had been at the Emmys over the past six years compared to the previous fifteen it seemed like it wasn’t the Emmy voters who had short memories.
Still there’s a certain logic to it. Considering that two of the biggest nominees at the Emmys were Lovecraft Country and Pose and both went home empty handed that night on acting, it’s hard to blame them. When four of the six nominees for Best Actor in a Drama are man of color and the Emmy went to Josh O’Connor for The Crown, despite the fact O’Connor had won every award leading up to it, it’s hard not to see their frustration. And I won’t lie Michael K. Williams absolutely should have won for Lovecraft Country before he tragically passed away weeks before the Emmys: that it went to Tobias Menzies is not forgivable.
And while I do agree that Ted Lasso absolutely deserved the Emmys it got for acting the fact that Brett Goldstein took the prize when four different series represented three different ethnic minorities — among them Hunt’s co-stars Nick Mohammed — I see the logic.
But the Emmys wasn’t entirely white. Michaela Coel won for writing the incredible limited series I May Destroy You and if we are to have diversity in awards the fact that a performer of African-Caribbean heritage of British citizenry winning was significant and certainly stook in contrast to the wins for The Crown. And for the third time in four years a woman won for directing and writing in comedy: Lucia Aniello, one of the major creative forces behind the incredible Hacks. Not to mention that three of the four winners for Guest Acting in drama or comedy were African-Americans — Maya Rudolph and Dave Chapelle for their work on SNL, Courtney B. Vance for his guest stint on Lovecraft Country.
Still in a sense it was a step back. For one year. When the lockdowns for Covid ended, so many of the great series came back as well as a host of new ones. And by far the most significant was Squid Game. The first foreign language drama of any kind to be nominated for Emmys, it was one of 2022’S biggest winners. Lee Jung-Jee became the first Korean to win an Emmy in any acting category for his lead role and Hwang Dong-Hyuk won for direction His co-star Lee You-Mi took Best Guest Actress in a Drama. Altogethe five Korean actors were nominated in the drama category and Dong-Hyuk was nominated for writing; Zendaya’s second win for Best Actress seemed almost tame by comparison.
But in comparison the wins in comedy were highpoints in Emmy history, both in significance and power. Sheryl Lee Ralph was the unexpected winner for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her work in Abbott Elementary only the second in Emmy history. Her arrival stage and her acceptance speech went viral. It had been thirty five years since Jackee Harry had won the first Emmy for 227. There would be a much briefer wait for the next winner of color in this category.
But even bigger was Quinta Brunson’s win for writing the Pilot of Abbott Elementary. In less than a year Brunson had gone from a virtual unknown to the face of and the genius behind the biggest sensation in network comedy in nearly five years. Brunson’s triumph was one of the great moments in my career of watching the Emmys.
The big winner on Emmy night was the first season of Mike White’s The White Lotus. The breakout sensation of the all-star cast was Murray Bartlett, a gay actor from Australia. Bartlett had worked in many series to this point, including HBO’s gay themed comedy-drama looking but this was his most significant role in nearly thirty years. Bartlett was nominated for two more Emmys, playing Nick De Nola in Welcome to Chippendales and Frank in the already iconic ‘Long, Long Time’ episode of The Last of Us.
What’s the most surprising thing about the 2023 Emmys being the most diverse Emmys in their history was that they essentially started with one hand tied behind their backs. In large part because of the domination of Succession and The White Lotus in the supporting acting categories for the first time in the 21st century there wasn’t a single African-American acting nominee in the Drama category. Only the presence of Pedro Pascal for The Last of Us and Aubrey Plaza for The White Lotus gave us any diversity at all in the lead drama category at all. Now it was made up for because there were three African-American nominees in the Guest Actor and Actress category, all from The Last of Us and Storm Reid ended up winning in the latter. But it wasn’t a good look that so many lead acting nominees from diverse backgrounds, from Andor and Better Call Saul as well as Yellowjackets really made the Emmys look like they were going backwards.
Fortunately the other two categories more than made up for it. Abbott Elementary alone put four African-American actors in the race and Quinta Brunson made history — for the second straight year — by becoming the first African-American woman in since Isabel Sanford in 1981 — to win Best Actress in a Comedy. She is now the first African-American woman in history to win an Emmy for acting and writing. Ayo Edebiri became the third African-American woman to win Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for The Bear; that year for the first time in history the majority of the nominees were African-American (Edebiri, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Janelle James for Abbott Elementary and Jessica Williams for Shrinking. This year she will attempt to become the first actress since Alison Janney to win Actress and Supporting Actress for playing the same role. Sam Richardson took an Emmy for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy for his role on Ted Lasso.
But of course the most historic wins were in the Best Limited Series category. In another year Niecy Nash-Betts first win after four nominations in multiple categories — along with her incredible acceptance speech for Dahmer — would have been the emotional highpoint of the Emmy Night. But not only was it only one of them, it wasn’t even close to the most significant for diversity in that category. The big winner in that category was the first season of Beef. A master class story on the how an incident of road rage affects the lives of two Korean-Americans and everyone in their orbit the series won five of the seven Emmys in play, all of them for Asian Americans. Lee Sung Jin made history with three Emmys win for producing, directing and writing the series. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong took Best Actor and Best Actress in a Limited Series respectively. Both had been veterans of the acting scene for more than fifteen years; Yeun most famously for The Walking Dead, Wong in countless series. Both shared in Emmys for producing the series as well. Combined with the wins for RuPaul for Reality TV and Trevor Noah for his final year hosting The Daily Show, it was a historic night for television in any way one measured it.
At the start of the first article in this series I argued that Peak TV was more a creation of critics then it had to do with the reality of viewer patterns. I also argued and will continue to do so that we are witnessing a shift in television and it remains to be seen the full extent before we argue the era truly dead.
But if the critics are looking at this period and mourning it, the question truly needs to be asking what is being mourned. And if we use, as I did in the first article in the series, the Emmy nominations as our context before and during the era we get a very distinct picture of the series that critics considered the best of television of the period — one that features White Male Antiheroes and was run by essentially white men.
As I said before I don’t deny the quality of the series of that era — I won’t lie and say The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men et al were not some of the best shows in history. They also represented the most monochromatic era in Emmy history as well. Few would argue that the series in the decade that followed I’ve mentioned — which also include dramas such as This is Us, The Americans and Better Call Saul in drama; The Good Place, Transparent and Reservation Dogs in comedy; Fargo and True Detective in anthology, among countless others — are among the best series in TV history. When you include the fact that during this decade, there was an infinitely greater caliber of great roles for minorities of all types that simply didn’t exist during most of the era of Peak TV, one truly has to question what so many of the admirers of the first part of this are truly mourning the departure of.
It’s possible that television will not be of the same caliber it was in the first decade of the 2000s; I don’t hold with that but we can’t see the future. But given all of what I have described in this article and the continued representation of all minorities in this year’s Emmy nominations then there is unquestionably a greater variety of the kinds of roles and recognition than there ever has been in the history of television. That is to be celebrated and something to give all viewers hope for the future.