Following her two Emmy wins on Sunday at the 2021 Creative Arts Emmys, Maya Rudolph became the third Black woman ever to win back-to-back acting Emmys in the same category.
Rudolph won the Outstanding Guest Actress In A Comedy Series award for her appearance in Saturday Night Live, and the Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance award for her role of Connie the Hormone Monstress Netflix’s Big Mouth.
Speaking to reporters via Zoom backstage, Rudoph said “I feel like this Emmy is very fitting in that it’s for something that feels like such a personal achievement. It’s for hosting my childhood love and dream and at a place in my life I finally realized it’s what I do best, and what makes me happiest when I perform. I feel really honored that I’m part of a legacy as the third woman of color to achieve that.”
Before Rudolph, Regina King won Emmys two years in a row in 2015 and 2016 in the Outstanding Supporting Actress category for American Crime and Uzo Aduba won in 2014 and 2015 in the Outstanding Supporting Actress category for Orange Is The New Black.
Rudolph, with her Emmy wins this year, also became the first person in 20 years to “win twice consecutively in the same category, twice,” Deadline reported.
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Speaking about her appearance as Kamala Harris on the show, and about her experience of meeting the Vice-President of US, Rudolph said “We did meet during a fundraiser before the election over Zoom. She was quite aware that I was playing her and was so lovely and cool, and it was so exciting to talk to her and to meet her, and to get a chance to be a part of her orbit.”
The 2021 Creative Arts Emmys were held at the the Event Deck of the L.A. Live campus in downtown Los Angeles. The awards were presented in three ceremonies held over September 11 and 12. “The ceremony honored performers, artists and craftspeople in categories including casting, choreography, commercials, lighting design, music composition, special visual effects, and guest performance,” the television academy said.
An edited presentation will be broadcast on September 18 on FXX.
This year’s edition saw additional consecutive wins, including American drag queen RuPaul Charles, host of RuPaul’s Drag Race, taking home the Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program for the sixth year in a row.
Also receiving praise for its diversity and representation was HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, which won the Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming, on Saturday. Accepting the award, editor Stephanie Filo — who was joined by colleagues Daysha Broadway and Jessica Hernández — said, “There have never been three women of color standing here with this award. It so important that people staff their crews with diversity and inclusion.”
Broadway later noted that the entire cast, as well the writers’ room, consisted of Black women and expressed hope that the show would be an inspiration to other young Black women with dreams of working in the entertainment industry.
Netflix won a total of 34 Emmys, with The Queen’s Gambit contributing nine awards alone, in the scripted program categories. Disney+ garnered 13 wins, mainly led by The Mandalorian with seven wins.