John Leguizamo Celebrates Diverse 2024 Emmy Nominees

John Leguizamo is “almost happy and certainly less angry” with the 2024 Emmy nominees.

As he took the stage at Sunday night’s show, the Emmy-winning actor made sure to point out, “I am one of Hollywood’s newest DEI hires. That’s right, DEI. The ‘D’ stands for diligence, the ‘E’ stands for excellence, the ‘I’ stands for imagination. And everyone in this room tonight has dedicated their lives to diligence, excellence, and imagination, so we are all DEI hires. What a beautiful, diverse group we are tonight.”

He then reflected on the fact that when he was growing up in Queens, New York, he “didn’t know people like me could be actors.”

“At 15, I didn’t know the word representation… but I saw a lot of brown faces,” he said, highlighting various actors for their portrayals of Latino characters despite not being of Latino descent, including Marlon Brando for playing a Mexican, Al Pacino for playing a Cuban gangster and Natalie Wood for playing a “Puerto Rican beauty” named Maria in West Side Story.

“Everybody played us except us. I didn’t see many people on TV who looked like me,” Leguizamo said.

“Of course, there was always Ricky Ricardo,” he added, also mentioning the Looney Tunes cartoon mouse Speedy Gonzales and his “lethargic and useless sidekick” Slowpoke Rodriguez.

“And that’s how we saw ourselves, because that’s all we saw of ourselves,” he said.

“For years, I didn’t complain about the limited roles my colleagues were offered… It turns out that not complaining changes nothing. So for the last few years, I’ve been complaining.”

He then spoke about the open letter to the Television Academy that he published in the The New York Times in which he urged his peers to nominate artists of color in all categories before Emmy voting.

He praised this year’s ceremony for including “the most diverse list of nominees” that also includes his “incredibly talented Latino siblings.” He applauded nominees Selena Gomez, Sofía Vergara, Issa Lopez, Kali Reis and Nava Mau for their notable nominations and Liza Colón-Zayas for her historic Emmy win earlier in the evening. Colón-Zayas became the first Latino actress to win in the best supporting actress category.

“There are five Latino nominees being honored tonight,” he said, before joking that Mark Cuban would be the sixth since his last name was Cuban. “We need more stories from excluded groups: Black, Jewish, Arab, LGBTQ+ and disabled. And tonight’s show is proof that our industry is making progress.”

On the way to the ceremonies, Shogun led the nominations and also dominated the Creative Arts ceremonies last week with 14 wins. Other nominees include The Bear, Only Murders Are in the Building, True Detective: Night Country And The Crown.

Shogunwhich took nearly 10 years to come to fruition, marked a major moment for Asian representation and non-English-language television. Following Netflix’s Korean success in 2022 Squid Game, Shogun is only the second predominantly non-English-language series to be nominated in the Outstanding Drama Series category. All of the series’ honorees are nominated for the first time as individuals, and most are also the first-ever Japanese nominees in their respective categories in Emmy history.

After winning the award for best actress in a drama series, Shogun Anna Sawai, the star of the series, became the first actress of Asian descent to win in this category. Hiro Sanada, who won the Emmy for best actor in a drama for his Shogun role, became the second actor of Asian origin (after Squid Game(Lee Jung-jae) and the first Japanese actor to win the Emmy for best actor in a drama.

The Emmy Awards were broadcast live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on ABC. Eugene and Dan Levy were the presenters. Check out the red carpet arrivals.