Sterling K. Brown Emmys speech cut short after historic win

Entertainment Weekly

Chancellor Agard7 hrs ago

Sterling K. Brown’s Emmys speech was cut short on Sunday after the This Is Us star became the first black actor to win the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series since 1998.
“To my fellow nominees, I’m a fan. I love you all,” said Brown, who plays Randall Pearson on the NBC drama, when he took the stage to accept his award.
“This one right here?” he continued, referring to his trophy before giving a shout out to the fictional characters played by Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Jon Hamm (Mad Men), and Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street), respectively. (Braugher was the last black actor to win the award before Brown.)
“When I think about it, Walter White held this joint. Dick Whitman held this joint. And 19 years ago, Detective Frank Pembleton held this joint. I just want to say, Mr. Braugher, whether it’s at Stanford University or on this Emmys stage, it is my supreme honor to follow in your footsteps,” Brown said.
“I wanna thank my cast. You are the best white TV family that a brother has ever had, better than the white folks who raised Webster,” Brown told his This is Us costars in the audience, not long before the music began to play and cut his time short. Though the actor remained on stage to continue the rest of his speech, the camera panned out and the sound was cut from the mic.

Created by Dan Fogelman, This Is Us follows the Pearson family across the decades. Via flashbacks, we learn about Jack and Rebecca’s (Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore) marriage and lives as young parents; and in the present day storyline, we see who their now 37-year-old kids Randall, Kate (Chrissy Metz), and Kevin (Justin Hartley) have grown up to be. In the first season, Brown brought audiences to tears multiple times as his character dealt with his anxiety problems and reconnected with his birth father, who was dying from cancer.
“When people who have gone through anxiety said, ‘I haven’t seen this on TV. Thank you for representing it as well as you did, and making me not feel as if something is wrong with me.’ You often have this feeling that it’s just me, and then you get a chance to see somebody else go through what it is that you go through, and then you feel like you’re not alone again. I am always really, really proud of an opportunity to tell people that they’re not alone,” Brown told EW.
Brown — who won the Emmy for best supporting actor in a limited series last year for his work on The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story – beat out fellow nominees Anthony Hopkins (Westworld), Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul), Matthew Rhys (The Americans), Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan), Kevin Spacey (House of Cards), and his This Is Us costar Milo Ventimiglia.