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.
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