Barack Obama continues to fill his awards cabinet and it is once again not for action in the field of politics. The former President of the United States received an Emmy for the narration of his Netflix documentary series Our major national parksthe American Television Academy announced on Saturday.
The awards ceremony will take place on September 13, but minor awards are announced before. Another president had already received an Emmy – Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 – but in his case it was an honorary award. Barack Obama’s successor to the presidency, Donald Trump, on the other hand, did not win an award for his reality show The Apprenticeeven though he was nominated twice.
Other nominees in the narrator category include former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Black Patriots: Heroes Of The Civil War), Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o (Serengeti II) and veteran naturalist David Attenborough (The Mating Game).
After leaving office in 2017, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle each wrote bestselling memoirs and, in addition to their nonprofit foundation, started a production company that signed a contract with Netflix worth estimated at tens of millions of dollars.
Two Grammys and a Nobel Peace Prize
Their company’s first documentary, AmericanFactorywon the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and an Emmy for Directing, but the awards went to the filmmakers, not the Obamas themselves.
The former American president (2009-2017) has also already won two Grammy Awards, for the audio versions of his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father. Among his distinctions, Barcak Obama had also received the Nobel Peace Prize after his victory in the 2008 presidential election, for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.