Barack Obama Wins 2022 Emmy for Best Narrator
Eva Deschamps / September 4, 2022
After the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, Barack Obama received a new distinction in a completely different genre: an Emmy, an award from American television, for a documentary
Former U.S. President Barack Obama has received an Emmy for the narration of his Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks, the American Academy of Television announced Saturday. The awards ceremony will be held Sept. 13, but minor awards are announced before then. Another president has received an Emmy before (Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956), but in his case it was an honorary award.
After leaving office in 2017, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle each wrote best-selling memoirs and, in addition to their nonprofit foundation, created a production company that signed a contract with Netflix worth an estimated tens of millions of dollars.
Their company's first documentary, American Factory, won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and an Emmy for Directing, but the awards went to the filmmakers, not the Obamas themselves.
Barack Obama's successor as president, Donald Trump, did not win an Emmy for his reality show The Apprentice, although he was nominated twice.
Other nominees in the narrator category include former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Black Patriots: Heroes Of The Civil War), Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o (Serengeti II) and veteran naturalist David Attenborough (The Mating Game).
The former U.S. president (2009-2017) has also already won two Grammy Awards, for the audio versions of his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father.
Among his honors, Mr. Obama also received the Nobel Peace Prize after his victory in the 2008 presidential election, for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation among peoples.