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The Decider team will be watching and reporting on the 2016 Emmy Awards as they air tonight with reactions to wins (and losses), live-blogs, and where you can stream the winners. Check back here for all our Emmys coverage.
Back in July when the Primetime Emmy nominations were announced, a quick crunching of the numbers came up with a heartening observation: the nominations were the most diverse in Emmy Awards history. A full 25% of the acting nominees were people of color. It was a welcome change of pace from what had been a dreadfully whitewashed Academy Awards back in February. And perhaps unsurprisingly, this most diverse set of nominees has yielded the most diverse crop of Emmys winners ever.
The impact of this diversity was felt across all categories, too, not just the actors. Though actors and actresses of color certainly saw great success. Rami Malek took his first Emmy nomination and ran with it, winning Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for Mr. Robot. The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story actors Sterling K. Brown and Courtney B. Vance both took home trophies, as did American Crime‘s Regina King, who repeated her Supporting Actress in a Limited Series win from last year.
Elsewhere, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele took home the Emmy for Variety Sketch Series for the final season of Key & Peele. And Master of None‘s Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang took home the Writing for a Comedy Series Award. Yang’s speech addressed the issue of diversity on TV directing:
“There’s 17 million Asian Americans in this country, and 17 million Italian Americans,” Yang said. “They have The Godfather, Goodfellas, Rocky, and The Sopranos. We’ve got Long Duk Dong. So we have a long way to go.”
The Emmys went beyond just racial diversity. It was a banner year for queer women working in TV, with wins for Kate McKinnon (Supporting Actress in a Comedy for Saturday Night Live), Sarah Paulson (Actress in a Limited Series for The People v. OJ Simpson), and Jill Soloway (Director for a Comedy Series for Transparent).
And in a repeat from last year, two women won directing trophies, with Soloway joined by The Night Manager director Susanne Bier, who bested seriously stiff competition from The People v. OJ and Fargo to win her award.
