Earning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award is one of Hollywood’s most coveted triumphs. Those bestowed with each are admitted into one of Hollywood’s most exclusive clubs. As Blavity previously reported, only 19 celebrities have accomplished the achievement, with less than half of the winners being Black, as of 2024. Multi-hyphenate talents like Jennifer Hudson, Whoopi Goldberg and John Legend are club members. Read on for how they got there and every other Black EGOT winner and three others close to joining them.
Viola Davis
Viola Davis made her first step toward EGOT status in 2001 when she won her first Tony Award in 2001 for her work in the August Wilson play King Hedley II. She won her second Tony in 2010 for her leading role in Wilson’s Fences. Davis starred in a film adaptation of the play in 2016 and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2017. In 2015, she made history when she became the first Black woman in Emmy history to win Oustanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her performance as Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder.
Davis secured her EGOT status in 2023 when she won the Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording Grammy Award for her audiobook Finding Me.
“I just EGOT!” Davis said as she accepted the Grammy, according to The Associated Press. “I wrote this book to honor the 6-year-old Viola, to honor her, her life, her joy, her trauma, everything. And, it has just been such a journey.”
John Legend
John Legend is an EGOT winner as of 2018, when he won an Emmy for Outstanding Live Variety Special for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, per NBC.
“Before tonight, only 12 people had won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in competitive categories,” Legend posted on Instagram at the time. “Sirs Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and I joined that group when we won an Emmy for our production of their legendary show Jesus Christ Superstar. So happy to be part of this team.”
Legend’s debut album, 2004’s Get Lifted, won him three Grammys for Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for “Ordinary People.” In 2015, he won an Oscar alongside Common for their song “Glory,” featured in Ava DuVernay’s 2014 film Selma.
Legend won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for co-producing August Wilson’s Jitney. Before the show opened, he spoke to Billboard about his process of picking non-musical projects to support.
“Enlighten, inspire and entertain. I feel like those are the things we look for in projects,” Legend said. “Obviously, my day job continues to be music, but I feel like we want to put out art that makes the world more interesting and more beautiful, and we’ve been able to do that.”
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson catapulted to stardom in 2006, starring alongside Beyoncé, Anika Noni Rose, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls. She took a big step toward EGOT status the following year, winning a Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Effie White in the film. In 2009, Hudson won her first Grammy for Best R&B Album. Her second came in 2017 when she won a Best Musical Theater Album award for The Color Purple.
In 2021, Hudson won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Media for a Daytime Program for Baba Yaga, which she co-produced and lent her voice to. The following year, she cemented her EGOT status after A Strange Loop, which she co-produced, won Best Musical at the 75th Tony Awards in 2022.
In 2020, Hudson joked with People about becoming a potential EGOT winner by telling the outlet how she could manifest the achievement.
“I got a dog and named it Oscar, and then I won my Oscar. And then I got a dog and named it Grammy, and then I won my Grammy,” she said at the time. “So I think I should get some dogs and name them Emmy and Tony – and it’ll give me good luck, and I’ll win [They’re] like my good luck charms.”
Whoopi Goldberg
Few entertainers are more iconic than Whoopi Goldberg, who started her journey to EGOT status in 1986 when she won the Best Comedy Recording Grammy Award for her self-titled, one-woman Broadway show.
“I’m going to have to get a job after this,” she joked while accepting the award before quipping, “Make me move!” to the orchestra after it began playing, an invitation for her to conclude her speech.
In 1990, Goldberg won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in her role in Ghost. Goldberg became the first Black to win an Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Special for hosting Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel in 2002. She also won a Best Musical Tony Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie that year, marking her an EGOT winner.
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones’ EGOT status has been debated over the years. The New York Times reported that he won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in The Great White Hope in 1969, becoming the first Black actor to win the award. He has two Emmy Awards won in the same year, 1991: one for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Gabriel’s Fire and the second for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for Heat Wave. His iconic voice, which he used to narrate Great American Documents, earned him a Grammy in 1977. He won an honorary Oscar, a Lifetime Achievement award, in 2011.
Because the latter is not a competitive Oscar, his contributions to entertainment earned him a spot on this list.
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte paved the way for generations of Black talent on stage, screen and beyond. Winning multiple Grammys for albums like Swing Dat Hammer (which won Best Performance – Folk at the 1961 ceremony) and An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba (which won Best Folk Recording in 1966), Belafonte appeared on the small screen, hosting the 1959 special Tonight with Harry Belafonte. He won a Best Variety Special Emmy for it in 1960, and became the first Black Emmy Award winner. Playbill reported that his work on Broadway earned him a Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured or Supporting Role in a Musical following his portrayal in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.
Like Jones, he was not awarded a competitive Oscar but won the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2014 Academy Awards.
Quincy Jones
Music legend Quincy Jones was also an EGOT winner. Throughout his seven-decade-long career, he won 28 Grammys, the third-most awarded individual. Some of his wins include three Producer of the Year Grammy Awards and two Album of the Year and Song of the Year awards. Jones won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for Roots.
Jones was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995 and received the Academy Honorary Award posthumously in 2024.
For his work in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Color Purple in 2016, he earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Black artists close to becoming EGOT winners
H.E.R.
H.E.R. is one award away from becoming an EGOT winner. The singer, whose birth name is Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, has won several Grammys with her 2017 self-titled compilation album, including a Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance award for “Best Part” with Daniel Caesar. In 2021, she won a Best Original Song Oscar Award for “Fight for You” from Judas and the Black Messiah, and the following year, she won an Outstanding Short Form Program Emmy for We the People. She has yet to be nominated for a Tony, but judging by the trajectory of her career, it’s not a farfetched notion.
Cynthia Erivo
2024 was a monumental year for Cynthia Erivo, who, prior to her starring role in Wicked, which earned her a Best Lead Actress nomination at the 2025 Oscars, was already tapped as a future EGOT winner. Her portrayal of Celie Harris Johnson in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple won her a Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2016.
The following year, Erivo and the cast of The Color Purple won Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program at the Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Erivo and the cast also won a Best Musical Theater Album Grammy Award that year.
Erivo was close to becoming an EGOT in 2019, as she was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Harriet and Best Original Song for “Stand Up” from the film. Wicked has offered her a second chance at becoming the youngest EGOT winner.
“Moments like this don’t come along very often, and when they do, it is sacrilege to let them pass by without a moment of gratitude,” she wrote in an Instagram post celebrating her most recent Best Actress nomination. “I am grateful, grateful to @theacademy, grateful to be a part of something that makes people feel seen, grateful to be a cog in the wheel of a piece that makes us believe in magic, grateful to have experienced a dream come true, and deeply [,] deeply grateful for this unbelievable recognition,” she captioned the post.
Lupita Nyong’o
Though she currently only has half an EGOT, Lupita N’yongo has been in the EGOT conversation since her electrifying Best Supporting Actress win at the 2014 Oscars for 12 Years a Slave, where she became the first Kenyan to win an Academy Award, The Standard reported. Since then, she’s gone on to earn a Tony nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Play following her role in Eclipsed in 2016 and winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Performance in a Children’s Program for Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices: Lupita Nyong’o Reads Sulwe. While Nyong’o hasn’t been nominated for a Grammy, should she pen a memoir, she could go down a path like Davis.
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