The Newest EGOT Hopeful Isn't The Celebrity You'd Expect

Congratulations are in store for all the winners of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. From "RuPaul's Drag Race" to Adele's television special "Adele: One Night Only", the list of winners from Deadline is seriously impressive. (The Television Academy has laid out the whole process that goes into winning an Emmy, and it's a lot.)

Even more incredible than winning an Emmy is one of the biggest honors in Hollywood, what is known colloquially as the "EGOT." It isn't an award in itself; rather, it's used to signify that a recipient has been awarded an Emmy (from the Television Academy), a Grammy (from the Recording Academy), an Oscar (from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), and a Tony (from the American Theatre Wing). These awards can be won in any category and don't need to be won in the order of the letters in the acronym, but it's a pretty exclusive club. Entertainment Weekly has a list of the celebrities who have reached EGOT status, including Jennifer Hudson as one of the more recent members.

What might sound surprising is that there are even more celebrities who are just an award away from reaching EGOT status, and one Emmy-winner just got one step closer.

Eminem nearly has an EGOT

Rapper Eminem is now a Tony Award away from EGOT status, as Deadline reports. The "Lose Yourself" rapper won a Creative Arts Emmy for his performance during the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show, which won in the Outstanding Variety Special category. The award was shared with the other performers during the halftime show, and a separate article from Deadline reports that this is the first time that any halftime show has won an Emmy.

According to the Recording Academy, Eminem has 15 Grammy wins to his name and has been nominated 44 times. Additionally, he has performed at the Grammy Awards four times (via the Recording Academy). He won his Academy Award, or Oscar, for "Lose Yourself" (from "8 Mile") in 2003 but did not attend that year's awards ceremony, before finally performing "Lose Yourself" at the Oscars in 2020 (via Variety).

"Back then, I never even thought that I had a chance to win, and we had just performed 'Lose Yourself' on the Grammys with the Roots a couple of weeks before the Oscars, so we didn't think it was a good idea," Eminem told Variety.

Eminem wouldn't have to act to win a Tony

Although Eminem has tried his hand at acting, most notably in the film "8 Mile," he actually wouldn't have to act to earn a Tony Award. The American Theatre Wing has numerous awards categories beyond acting; this includes the category Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre, which could make use of the rapper's established musical talents.

Such an award might seem unlikely, but it wouldn't be without precedent, either. The musical "American Idiot," the Broadway musical based on the concept album by So-Cal punk band Green Day, won two Tony Awards (via Billboard). "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," based on the music of Carole King, has also won two Tonys (via Broadway World). A Tony Award might not be out of the question for Eminem, then, whether it comes from an adaptation of "8 Mile" for the stage or a compilation of his greatest hits set to a new story.