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One of the most consequential storylines of this Emmy season involves the ones who say, “Action!”
Black women hold five directing nominations across three categories this year, the most the Television Academy has ever
recognized in a single cycle. Salli Richardson-Whitfield is nominated twice in drama directing, for HBO Max’s “The Gilded Age” and “Task,” alongside Hanelle Culpepper for the Hulu dystopian thriller “Paradise.” Ricki Hughes earned a nod for helming the variety special “Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable,” and Alexandria Stapleton is nominated for the documentary series “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” both from Netflix.
To understand why five is a number worth stopping on, you must count backward.
Debbie Allen became the first Black woman nominated for an Emmy in directing in any genre category, for “The Debbie Allen Special,” in 1989. It took 20 years for another to follow: Millicent Shelton, for the “30 Rock” episode “Kidney Now!” in 2009.
What came after was less like a gusher and more like a trickle: Laurie Ann Gibson for the special “Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden” in 2011; Dee Rees for the HBO movie “Bessie” in 2015; Beyoncé Knowles-Carter for “Lemonade” in 2016 and again for “Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé” in 2019; Ava DuVernay for the documentary “13th” in 2017 and the limited series “When They See Us” in 2019; Nadia Hallgren for “Becoming” in 2020; Michaela Coel for “I May Destroy You” in 2021; Dime Davis and Bridget Stokes for “A Black Lady Sketch Show” in 2021 and 2022; Nneka Onuorah for the Prime Video competition series “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” in 2022.
Richardson-Whitfield scored in 2024 with the one and only season of HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” which made her the first woman of color nominated in drama directing.
That is 35 years of names rattled off in one single breath. However, five in one morning is showing that progress is being made, even when it seems like Hollywood and the studio and network system is stepping away from DEI.
But when you look at how many have won, that’s a tougher pill to swallow.
The only Black women to walk off with the statuette are Stokes and Onuorah, both in variety. Drama, comedy, limited series and documentary have never produced one.
Which is what gives some of this year’s nominees some hope. Stapleton’s bid in particular could have the best shot at going the distance. “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” arrives with the timeliest subject on the documentary ballot and, by most reads of the race, the best shot at putting a Black woman onstage in September, especially with the backing of the streaming giant and critical acclaim the series received.
Directing nominations function as hiring credentials in a way acting nominations do not. Showrunners staff from lists, agents build those lists from recognition and a name that has never appeared on one is a name that has to be argued and fought for in every room.
The Asian American column is thinner still. Cary Joji Fukunaga won in drama in 2014 for the first season of “True Detective.” Lee Sung Jin won in limited series for “Beef.” And that completes the list.
Lee is back this cycle with the Netflix anthology’s sophomore season, which pulled 16 nominations overall (the most of any miniseries) and three for Lee himself. And Hiro Murai, now holding 11 career Emmy nominations and one win as an executive producer on the first season of “The Bear,” is triple-nominated for Apple TV’s horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay.” He is widely read as one of the front-runners in comedy directing. A win would make him the first Asian director to take that category and only the third Asian director to win in any directing category in Emmy history.
Murai doesn’t pretend the number means nothing.
“The significance of that is not lost on me,” he tells Variety. “Having been someone who came up in this industry not seeing a lot of Asian folks that I could sort of model after, I understand the importance of feature directors of Asian descent knowing that this was possible.”
Murai, who arrived in the United States from Japan at 9 years old, offered a theory on why there has been such an absence of Asian representation. “You accept the representation that you get, and then you adapt to what’s presented to you,” he reflects. “Asian filmmakers in America probably haven’t seen a lot of Asian filmmakers represented, and you internalize that. You think that’s not a position that you can reach.”
He also pushes back on the assumption that diverse authorship requires diverse subject matter, a framing that has quietly narrowed what directors of color get offered. Neither “Atlanta” nor “Widow’s Bay” is his story on the surface.
“Like all creative collaborations, I saw something in it that I could plug myself into,” Murai explains. “My participation in these stories can be part of diverse storytelling or Asian storytelling even if it’s not about Asian characters.”
Lee puts it out more bluntly.
“You always have to prove yourself tenfold more than your peers to be noticed, to be given another chance,” he shares. “I’ve been that way my whole life, and I think that is true of any creative of color.”
All of this is happening inside contraction. By Lee’s count, 46 fewer shows went into production in 2026. DEI initiatives that were announced with press releases in 2020 have retired without them.
“I think it is the hiring, and also diversifying the Academy and the peer groups,” Lee explains. “There’s been a lot of progress for sure. Certainly, it has changed since I started, but that doesn’t mean we slow down.”
Lee argues that visibility functions as infrastructure, not sentiment.
“Wanting to be in this field and see a face that looks like mine on television is not a stereotype,” he shares, citing the comedy classic “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” with John Cho and Kal Penn as a revelation for a younger version of himself. “I think these little moments do stack.”
Lee says he intends to keep hiring against the trend through his overall Netflix deal, and even beyond that, proven by his executive producer credit on “Lurker,” the directorial debut of former “Beef” writer Alex Russell.
“It’ll never not be a priority for me,” he says, “and I just hope it becomes a priority for other people too.”
For Murai, he’s looking past September.
“There’s forward movement, backward movement, but the overarching shape is that we’re heading in the right direction,” he says. “I see a lot of young filmmakers from completely different backgrounds interested in telling stories. That’s so exciting to me, more so than when I was a kid going to film school.”
No matter how hard people try, you can’t get rid of the color in Hollywood.
