Former US President Barack Obama wins Emmy for narrating national parks series

Former US president Barack Obama, on Saturday, won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for the best narrator for his work on the Netflix documentary series, Our Great National Parks.

The five-part show, which features national parks from around the globe, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground.

He won the award in a category full of famous nominees, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and Lupita Nyong’o.

Barack Obama is the second president to have an Emmy. Dwight D Eisenhower was given a special Emmy Award in 1956.

Barack previously won Grammy Awards for his audiobook reading of two of his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land. Michelle Obama, meanwhile, won her own Grammy for reading her audiobook in 2020.

With the Emmy win, Barack is halfway to an EGOT, which refers to a special category of entertainers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. To date, 17 people have done it.

Notably, the late Chadwick Boseman also won an Emmy for his voice work on Saturday. The Black Panther actor won for outstanding character voiceover for the Disney+ and Marvel Studios animated show What If…?. On the show, Boseman voiced his Black Panther character T’Challa in an alternate universe where he becomes Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. It was one of the last projects for Boseman, who died in 2020 of colon cancer at age 43.