On Sept. 3 the Television Academy presented the first of its two 2022 Creative Arts Emmy® Awards ceremonies honoring outstanding artistic and technical achievement in television at the Microsoft Theater in downtown LA. The ceremony, which kicked off the 74th Emmys, awarded many talented artists and craftspeople in genres including animation, reality, documentary/nonfiction and variety programming.
Chadwick Boseman was given a posthumous award for Outstanding Character Voice-over performance for “What If… T’Challa Became a Star-Lord?” This was part of a series on Disney +.
Boseman recorded his parts of the show before his untimely death from colon cancer in 2020. His widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the award on his behalf.
During the Sept. 12 Emmy Awards, ABC and 20th Television’s freshman hit series “Abbott Elementary” garnered three wins, including Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series; Quinta Brunson for Writing for a Comedy Series; and Sheryl Lee Ralph for Supporting Actress In a Comedy Series.
Ralph stars as Barbara Howard in the series and made a powerful acceptance speech, in which she belted out a song—Dianne Reeves’s 1993 “Endangered Species.”
“I am an endangered species/ But I sing no victim’s song/ I am a woman, I am an artist/ and I know where my voice belongs,”
“To anyone who has ever, ever had a dream and thought your treatment wasn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t come true, I am here to tell you that this is what believing looks like.” Ralph said.
“This is what striving looks like and don’t you ever, ever give up on you, because if you get a Quinta Brunson in your corner, if you get a husband like mine in your corner, if you get children like mine in your corner, and if you’ve got friends like everybody who voted for me, cheered for me, loved me. Thank you.”
