Anthony Anderson, the actor and comedian who won acclaim for his performance in the sitcom “Black-ish,” will host the 2024 Emmy Awards for the first time on Monday night. Although the upcoming awards show will mark Anderson’s debut as master of ceremonies on the Emmys stage, he has led other ceremonies before, including almost a dozen installations of the NAACP Image Awards.
The Television Academy, which is the organization that presents the annual Emmy Awards, introduced Anderson as the ceremony’s 2024 host in an announcement last month, where chairman Frank Scherma praised him as “a multi-talented performer and a great friend to the Television Academy.”
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This year’s Emmys ceremony takes place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, and will air Monday, Jan. 15, from 8-11 p.m. ET (5-8 p.m. PT) on FOX.
The Emmys are normally held held in September, but the ceremony was delayed because of lengthy strikes last summer and fall by members of Hollywood’s two major writers and actors unions.
“With our industry’s recent challenges behind us, we can get back to what we love — dressing up and honoring ourselves,” said Anderson, referencing the strikes in a statement included with the Academy’s hosting announcement.
“And there’s no better celebratory moment to bring the creative community together than the milestone 75th Emmy Awards,” his statement continued. “When FOX asked me to host this historic telecast, I was over the moon that Taylor Swift was unavailable, and now I can’t wait to be part of the biggest night in television.”
Who is Anthony Anderson?
Anthony Anderson is an actor and comedian known for roles in a range of popular television series spanning drama and comedy genres. He is also a seasoned host — at awards shows in addition to the ABC game show “To Tell the Truth,” which he hosted from 2016 to 2022 — as well as a recurring judge on the cooking competition series “Iron Chef America.”
Anderson was born in Compton, California, and began his career as an entertainer doing stand-up comedy. In more recent years, the 53-year-old has looked back on what he called his rough start as a stand-up comic, and often used those anecdotes as fodder for jokes in interviews.
He shares two children, Kira and Nathan, with Alvina Stewart, to whom Anderson was married from 1999 until last September. His son starred in the Netflix series “Richie Rich” and performed in a guest role on “Black-ish.” He also inspired Anderson to finish his undergraduate studies at Howard University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May 2022.
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Anderson said in an Instagram post after graduation that his son’s acceptance into the university pushed him to return to classes himself after having to cut short his time there as a student years ago due to financial reasons.
What movies and shows has Anthony Anderson been in?
Anderson is a Hollywood veteran who has appeared in numerous films and television shows over the last three decades, starting with a role on the LL Cool J sitcom “In the House” in 1995. He has credited his involvement in the Eddie Murphy film “Life” with giving him his big break a few years later in 1999.
Since then, Anderson appeared a handful TV crime dramas, including “K-Ville” and “Law & Order,” as well as the sitcom “Guys with Kids.” On the film side, he went on to act in movies like “Me, Myself & Irene,” “Kangaroo Jack,” “Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London,” “The Departed,” which won an Academy Award, “Transformers” and “Scream 4.”
He earned critical acclaim and a number of award nominations, including three previous nods at the Golden Globes and 11 at the Emmys, for his leading role in “Black-ish,” the sitcom by creator Kenya Barris that ran for eight seasons on ABC and culminated in a 2022 finale. Anderson also served as executive producer of the sitcom’s spinoffs, “Grown-ish” and “Mixed-ish.”
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Anderson talked about the success of “Black-ish,” and its incorporation of politics and social issues into a comedy series about family, in an interview with CBS News in 2017.
“We don’t pull headlines from the newspapers or the news or whatnot and go, ‘Oh, this is topical and timely. Let’s do this.’ We tell stories that are organic to this family,” Anderson said at the time. “I think doing it the way that we do it — authentically, truthfully, organically — is what makes our show resonate with an audience worldwide. We deal with universal stories and universal things that we all can identify with. It just so happens to be told from the perspective of this black family, but it’s everything that we go through.”
