The race for this year’s Emmy for Best Narrator just got its highest-profile potential nominee. Former President Barack Obama could very well win this category for his voice-over work in Netflix’s five-part docuseries “Our Great National Parks,” which premiered on April 13.
Obama’s narration helps the series explore the ecosystems that exist in the national parks of the United States, as well as in reserves all over the world. The show also looks at the role that humans play in threatening those ecosystems while also showing our ability to create these monuments to preservation.
The series was produced by Higher Ground Productions, which was founded in 2018 by Barack and Michelle Obama. While the company, which has an exclusive deal with Netflix, has only been around for four years, it has already proved to be a major player in awards races. In 2019 the company acquired “American Factory” and helped it take home the Oscar for Best Documentary as well as the Emmy for Best Documentary Directing. The company also helped to produce the Oscar nominated “Crip Camp” in 2020. (The Obamas themselves were not nominees or winners for either of those films, though.)
Obama is no stranger to showbiz awards. After being in the U.S. Senate for just over a year, he won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2006 for the audiobook of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” In 2008, while he was still the junior senator from Illinois and six months before he would become the Democratic nominee for president, he won the category again for “The Audacity of Hope.” This year saw him receive another nomination in the category for “A Promised Land,” but he lost that one to Don Cheadle for “Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation from John Lewis.”
So an Emmy win would get Obama halfway to the coveted EGOT status, the high accomplishment of winning a competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award, which only 16 individuals to date have ever accomplished.
While an Emmy for Obama would be the first for an ex-president, there are several politicians who have won various forms of the television award. Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist has a 2009 Suncoast Regional Emmy for a TV special produced by his office while he was the Republican governor of Florida, which he keeps displayed on a mini-fridge in his DC office. Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb won a News/Documentary Emmy in 1983 for producing a special report on the civil war in Lebanon for “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS.
Several politicians have also won honors at the International Emmys. Former Vice President Al Gore won the Founders Award in 2007 for work that “crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.” He was recognized in his role as the chairman of Current TV. In 2020 then-governor of New York Andrew Cuomo was awarded the same honor for his daily briefings on the COVID-19 pandemic. Less than a year later the honor was rescinded by the International TV Academy due to Cuomo’s resignation after multiple allegations of sexual harassment. International leaders have also been recognized by this organization. Sixteen months before he was elected to his first stint as prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi received the Directorate Award in 1992 for his work as president of the media conglomerate, Fininvest Gruppo.
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