Former president Barack Obama recently won his first Emmy, bringing him closer to the acclaimed EGOT status.
Announced yesterday in the first-day presentation for the 74th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Obama was given the award for “Oustanding Narrator” for his work on “Our Great National Parks,” winning over other nominees in the category such as Lupita Nyong’o, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and W. Kamau Bell.
Executive produced by the former president himself alongside directors James Honeyborne and Tonia Davis, “Our Great National Parks” is a five-part nature docuseries that offers insight into some of the world’s greatest national parks and the wildlife amongst them.
With each episode directed by different directors, such as Sarah Peat and Joanne Scofield, the show explores the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, the Yakushima National Park in Japan, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda amongst other places.
With his most recent win, the former president became the first president in history to win in the category and the second president ever to win an Emmy; in 1956, former president Dwight D. Eisenhower won a special Primetime Emmy Governors Award for his press conference on TV, making him the first president to hold a televised press conference.
The award also brings Obama halfway to achieving EGOT status. Composed of winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, only 17 people, such as Jennifer Hudson, Audrey Hepburn and Whoopi Goldberg, have gotten an EGOT.
The former president already has won two Grammys. In 2006, he took home the award for the “Best Spoken Word Album” for his memoir “Dreams from My Father.” He once again won the award for the same category in 2008 for his memoir “The Audacity of Hope.”
Obama is once again nominated at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards for the “Best Spoken Word Album” for his newest memoir, “A Promised Land.”
Along with the former president, the late Chadwick Boseman also won a posthumous Emmy Award for his voiceover work in Marvel’s “What If…?” series. Winning in the “Oustanding Character Voice-over” performance category, Boseman was awarded for his role as Star-Lord T’Challa in the “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” episode of the series.
Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series of the Beatles, “The Beatles: Get Back,” and Adele’s “One Night Only” special were also amongst the night’s winners with both works winning five awards each, tying with each other for the “most awards of the night” spot.
