When Benj Pasek and Justin Paul won a Primetime Emmy on night 2 of the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday (Sept. 8, 2024), they became EGOTs, having won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in competition. They won their Emmy for outstanding music and lyrics for a song they co-wrote for Only Murders in the Building.
They co-wrote the song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” with another songwriting team, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Only 21 people have achieved EGOT status, which has become the ultimate mic-drop move in show business. If the original idea of becoming an EGOT meant going to the very top in four distinct fields of entertainment, shortcuts have materialized to getting there, which has made the achievement more commonplace and less worthy of awe.
The Tonys award producer credits far too liberally . Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson won their Tony Awards for being among a platoon of producers of a winning Broadway show. Hudson was one of more than 40 producers on A Strange Loop .
Her participation was announced the day before the show began previews in April 2022. It won the Tony two months later. And not all EGOT awards are equally easy or hard to get.
There are currently just 23 categories at the Oscars and 26 at the Tony Awards. Far more awards are handed out at the Grammys (94 categories this year) and the Primetime Emmys (a whopping 123 categories this year, spread out over three nights). And that doesn’t even count the various other Emmy show.