SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE BLACK WOMEN WHO NABBED 2026 EMMY NOMINATIONS

Black women are all over this year’s Emmy ballot, with nominations spanning workplace comedy, restaurant panic, dystopian terror, addiction drama, murder mysteries, true crime, and some exceptionally well-directed television.

From established stars who’ve been making excellence look routine for years to newer names already carving out space for themselves, this year’s nominees represent an incredible range of talent in front of and behind the camera. They’re leading shows, stealing scenes, shaping entire worlds, and reminding everyone there’s no single way for Black women to dominate.

Here’s a rundown of the nominees and why I’m obsessed with every one of them.

Ayo Edebiri

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for The Bear

Season four found Sydney Adamu surrounded by people yelling while she attempted to make a career-altering decision with a calm face. With an opportunity outside The Bear forcing her to reconsider her future, Sydney had to decide whether loyalty to the restaurant was worth the professional and emotional cost.

Ayo Edebiri can turn a blink, breath, or half-second pause into an entire argument. Her Sydney is ambitious without becoming a hollow boss-girl slogan—a gifted chef trying to build something excellent inside a workplace where emotional regulation is treated like an optional garnish. Edebiri lets all of Sydney’s frustration, pride, anxiety, and hunger coexist, even when Sydney refuses to say any of it out loud.

Stream on: Hulu

Chase Infiniti

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for The Testaments

Set in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments follows a new generation of women growing up under Gilead’s control. Chase Infiniti stars as Agnes, June Osborne’s biological daughter, who was raised inside the regime and gradually begins questioning the beliefs, expectations, and future chosen for her.

Infiniti was already one of the brightest spots on my Golden Globes list, and apparently she decided one major awards season wasn't enough. As Agnes, she gives a quiet, tightly controlled performance that lets us watch rebellion forming long before the character is ready to name it. Following a breakout film role with the lead in one of television’s bleakest universes is one hell of a résumé starter.

Stream on: Hulu

Hanelle M. Culpepper

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for Paradise, “Exodus”

Paradise packs an absurd amount into “Exodus”: emotional reunions, major deaths, buried secrets, and, in typical Paradise fashion, at least one absolutely bonkers twist.

Through it all, Culpepper sticks to the formula that’s worked so well in the show’s second season. The pace stays tight and the suspense never lets up, but the episode never loses the deeply empathetic lens that makes us care about the people caught in the middle of all that post-apocalyptic madness.

Stream on: Hulu

Janelle James

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Abbott Elementary

Ava Coleman remains the principal least likely to consult an employee handbook and the most likely to make an entrance that ruins everyone else’s day. She may be vain, distractible, wildly inappropriate, and more invested in securing good lighting than running a school, but every season reveals more of the frighteningly capable woman underneath.

Janelle James could've let Ava become a collection of excellent one-liners and designer outfits. Instead, she's built a woman whose shamelessness, survival instincts, and occasional flashes of genuine leadership somehow make perfect sense together. James is a scene stealer. Period.

Stream on: Hulu

Jessica Williams

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Shrinking

Shrinking follows Jimmy, a grieving therapist who begins throwing professional boundaries out the window. Jessica Williams plays Gaby, his fellow therapist, friend, colleague, and frequent emotional first responder, who's attempting to manage everyone else’s mess while dealing with plenty of her own.

Williams plays Gaby like the funniest and smartest person in almost every room without making her feel invulnerable. The sarcasm comes easily, but so does the tenderness underneath.

Stream on: Apple TV

Joy Sunday

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for DTF St. Louis

The premise of DTF St. Louis is messy af by design: a suburban love triangle, a dating app, several questionable decisions, and a murder. Joy Sunday plays Detective Jodie Plumb, the officer tasked with sorting through the lies and figuring out how all those romantic shenanigans ended with a dead body.

In a series full of people making increasingly ridiculous choices, Sunday provides the skeptical, controlled intelligence it desperately needs. Jodie's observant without being robotic, funny without becoming comic relief, and consistently two steps ahead of people who still believe they're being clever. Also, her raised eyebrow deserves its own case file.

Stream on: HBO Max

Octavia Spencer

Outstanding Narrator for Lost Women of Alaska

The three-part docuseries Lost Women of Alaska examines the murders and disappearances of Alaska Native women, as well as the institutional failures that have allowed far too many cases to be neglected, mishandled, or forgotten. Octavia Spencer serves as both narrator and executive producer.

Spencer’s narration is compassionate and appropriately restrained. She never treats the women’s stories like true-crime spectacle or uses their pain to showcase her own performance. Instead, she gives the victims, their families, and the injustice at the center of the series room to remain the focus. The result is beautifully compassionate.

Stream on: HBO Max and Discovery+

Quinta Brunson

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Abbott Elementary

At this point, Janine Teagues needs very little introduction. The relentlessly optimistic teacher returned for another season of educating Phillly’s youth while navigating an underfunded school, district foolishness, unruly coworkers, and the increasingly complicated business of adulthood.

Quinta Brunson understands that Janine’s optimism is funniest when it collides directly with reality. But she never plays her like an oblivious ray of sunshine. Janine's ambitious, occasionally controlling, deeply earnest, and always trying to become the teacher—and person—she imagines herself capable of being. Five seasons and 14 nominations in, Brunson remains the heart of the hilarious show she created.

Stream on: Hulu

Salli Richardson-Whitfield

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for The Gilded Age, “My Mind Is Made Up,” and Task, “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There Is a River”

Salli Richardson-Whitfield didn't merely land one drama-directing nomination. She landed two in the same category, becoming the first Black woman to achieve that in a single year.

Her nominated episodes could hardly be more different: one unfolds among the gowns, mansions, and meticulously concealed warfare of The Gilded Age; the other inside the bruising crime drama of Task. Before she started dominating from the director’s chair, Richardson-Whitfield was one of the most recognizable faces in ’90s Black film and television. She caught the directing bug while starring on Syfy’s Eureka, where she made her directorial debut, and clearly hasn’t looked back since.

Stream on: HBO Max

Zendaya

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Euphoria

After an absurdly long hiatus, Euphoria returned with a time jump that found Rue and her former classmates beyond high school. Adulthood hasn't magically cured Rue’s addiction or freed her from its consequences, leaving her once again wrestling with survival, faith, and the damage she's caused.

Zendaya's always understood that Rue’s messiness is the point. She plays every lie, relapse, joke, and flash of fear without sanding down the ugliest parts or asking us to excuse them. As Rue, she was the show’s anchor. And through her narration, her life becomes something we begin to understand from the inside out.

Stream on: HBO Max

Whether every one of these women takes home a trophy is almost beside the point. The nominations simply confirm what viewers already knew: Black women are not having a “moment” on television. They're holding up entire genres—from both sides of the camera.