When Elton John: Farewell from Dodger Stadium won outstanding variety special (live) at the long-delayed Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday Jan. 15, everybody immediately grasped what that meant. Elton John was now officially an EGOT, having won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in competition.
Only 19 people have achieved EGOT status, which has become the ultimate mic-drop move in show business.
If the original idea of becoming an EGOT meant going to the very top in four distinct fields of entertainment, shortcuts have materialized to getting there, which has made the achievement more commonplace and less worthy of awe. The Tonys award producer credits far too liberally. Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson won their Tony Awards for being among a platoon of producers of a winning Broadway show. Hudson was one of more than 40 producers on A Strange Loop. Her participation was announced the day before the show began previews in April 2022. It won the Tony two months later.
And not all EGOT awards are equally easy or hard to get. There are currently just 23 categories at the Oscars and 26 at the Tony Awards. Far more awards are handed out at the Grammys (94 categories this year) and the Primetime Emmys (a whopping 123 categories this year, spread out over three nights). And that doesn’t even count the various other Emmy shows, such as the Daytime Emmys and the Children’s and Family Emmys.
We mentioned earlier that the definition of EGOT is having won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in competition. There’s some debate about that. Six more individuals – Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, James Earl Jones, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones and director/producer Frank Marshall – qualify if you count honorary or special awards. However, most EGOT experts don’t count non-competitive awards. The whole point is to have won the awards in competition.
Here’s a comprehensive rundown on the competitive winners’ road to EGOT.
This report draws on an earlier report filed by Cat Buckley in 2017.
