Ayo Edebiri continued her awards season sweep by scoring her first Emmys trophy.
“I’m so incredibly grateful for this for so many reasons. But the main one, this is a show about family and found family and real family,” Edebiri, 28, said during her acceptance speech on Monday, January 15. “My parents are here tonight. I’m making them sit kind of far away from me because I’m a bad kid. But I love you guys so much.”
She continued: “Thank you so much for loving me and letting me feel beautiful and Black and proud of all of that. I just love you so much. It’s a dream to emigrate to this country and have your child be like, ‘I want to do improv.’ Thank you so much. This means the world.”
Edebiri won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sydney Adamu in The Bear. She competed against The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Alex Borstein, Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James and Sheryl Lee Ralph, Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham and Shrinking’s Jessica Williams.
Edebiri’s win comes just one week after she earned her first Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy on January 7. After taking the stage, she charmed the audience with her relatable acceptance speech.
“I’m so very grateful for this. I’m in a room full of so many people who I admire and whose work has lifted me up,” she said at the time. “I’m an artist, I’m very lucky to be an artist and I know we all feel that way, so I just really want to acknowledge that.”
Edebiri went on to thank her costars. “To my family — everyone at The Bear — that’s my family. I love you guys so much. It’s an honor to work with you and grow alongside you,” she gushed. “Oh, my gosh, the actors I was nominated alongside and my real family. I love you guys too.”
Near the end of her speech, Edebiri showed her gratitude to the lesser-known individuals on her team who help her behind the scenes. “This just really means a lot. There’s probably a lot of people I forgot to thank. All my agents and managers’ assistants! The people who answer my emails,” she concluded. “Y’all are real ones. Thank you for answering my crazy, crazy emails. I’m really, really grateful. If I forgot to thank you, I’m sorry. Unless you were mean or something.”
Elsewhere at the awards show, Edebiri endeared herself to fans with her reactions to costar Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein underwear ads. “I’m bulking up,” she joked to Entertainment Tonight about her fitness routine. “So I’m eating, I’m on the protein, I’m on the creatine.”
Edebiri then quipped that she would be focusing on her abs during the “second quarter” of the year. “Quads [are] Q3. And then, back up to the arms, actually,” she said. “We’re leaving the rest of the leg, we’re leaving it alone.”
As the night went on, the questions about the NSFW photos continued. While she insisted that she was “happy” for White, 32, she told Access Hollywood, “I do feel like I want people to understand he’s my coworker.”
After the cast won Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, Edebiri hid an enlarged photo from the shoot during the group’s interview with Extra. “I’m putting it away for my boy! That’s my boy,” she noted. “This is a work function!”
