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The Good and Bad News from This Year’s Emmy Nominations
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 15 Jul, 2025
Bowen Yang is the sole Asian American actor to receive a nomination this year.
The 2025 Emmy nominations have been announced and here’s the good news: Bowen Yang has made history. By receiving a nomination for his work on Saturday Night Live for the fourth time, Yang has become the most nominated Asian male actor in the 76-year history of the Emmys.
Yang should not, however, expect to become the most nominated Asian actor overall any time soon. That distinction belongs to Sandra Oh, who has 14 nominations and one win.
While the AAPI community should absolutely be celebrating Yang’s achievements, there sadly isn’t much more to get excited about this year.
Actress Brenda Song did serve as an MC, helping to reveal the names of those nominated, and British Pakistani writer Bisha K. Ali received a nomination for her writing on Black Mirror. But aside from Yang, no other actor out of the 94 names announced appears to be of AAPI descent.
That means that just over 1% of all actors nominated this year were Asian American. For context, Asian Americans account for approximately 6% of the general population.
So do we blame the Television Academy for not nominating more Asians? It’s not that simple.
While there may have been cases where a particular Asian actor was snubbed this year, the greater issue is likely that there simply wasn’t enough of a pool of AAPI actors onscreen to choose from. The root cause likely lies with producers, writers, and casting agencies for the lack of representation on screen in the first place.
And while a discrepancy that large is hard to justify, there’s reason to hope that this year was an anomaly rather than being part of a larger trend. 2024’s acting nominations, after all, recognized five members of the Japanese community who starred in FX’s hit series Shogun, which received 25 total nominations.
Other 2024 nominees included “3 Body Problem” co-creator Alexander Woo, Maya Erskine of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” Greta Lee for “the Morning Show,” Awkwafina and Sandra Oh for Hulu’s TV movie “Quiz Lady” and Bowen Yang for SNL.
Next year will give us a better picture of what direction we’re trending in, but for now, we can at least celebrate Yang's feat and hope that he can add "Emmy Winner" next to "Four-time Emmy Nominee."
The greater issue is likely that there simply wasn’t enough of a pool of AAPI actors onscreen to choose from
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