Tamara Tunie, Sherri Shepherd, Star Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross, Keke Palmer and Ambyr Michelle went home with gold Friday night, and two of the biggest wins were made in Atlanta.
By the Cup of Soul Awards Desk | Edited by Kathia R. Woods
Tamara Tunie made her daytime debut in 1987. She waited 39 years for this one.
Friday night at the Hollywood Palladium, Tunie won outstanding lead performer in a daytime drama series at the 53rd Daytime Emmy Awards for Anita Williams Dupree, the former singer turned family matriarch at the center of CBS's "Beyond the Gates." It is her first Daytime Emmy. She is only the second Black actress to win the category, after Mishael Morgan took it for "The Young and the Restless" in 2022.
Tunie did not accept the trophy as a personal victory. She accepted it as an inheritance. From the podium she credited the Black actresses who cleared the road for her, beginning with Cicely Tyson, whom she noted was the first Black woman to appear on a daytime series, on "Guiding Light." She saluted her TV daughter and fellow nominee, Karla Mosley. Then she landed the line of the night: "This is the best welcome back to daytime ever."
That was the shape of the whole evening. Black women won in drama, talk, court, travel and digital, across four networks and two streamers, in a ceremony that ran without a host.
The Black winners at a glance
Tamara Tunie, lead performer in a daytime drama series: actress, "Beyond the Gates" (CBS)
Ambyr Michelle, emerging talent in a daytime drama series, "Beyond the Gates" (CBS)
Sherri Shepherd, daytime talk series host, "Sherri" (Debmar-Mercury)
Star Jones and Corey Jovan, daytime personality, daily, "Divorce Court" (Fox)
Tracee Ellis Ross, travel and adventure program, "Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross" (Roku)
Keke Palmer, daytime short form program, "Glam Through the Ages" (KeyTV)
"Beyond the Gates" also won for lighting direction and tied "The Kelly Clarkson Show" for hairstyling and makeup, for four wins total.
'Beyond the Gates' arrives
To understand what Friday meant, start with what daytime had been missing. When "Beyond the Gates" premiered in February 2025, it became the first hourlong network daytime soap built around a Black family. The last time a network soap put a Black family at its core was NBC's half-hour "Generations," which ran from 1989 to 1991. The new show comes out of the CBS Studios and NAACP venture led by executive producer Sheila Ducksworth, and it is shot in metro Atlanta.
It walked into its first year of eligibility with 15 nominations, the most ever for a debut soap. Tunie and Mosley became the first two Black actresses nominated in the same lead actress race in the Daytime Emmys' 53-year history. Then the show converted.
Ambyr Michelle, the Omaha, Nebraska, native who plays the volatile Eva Thomas, won emerging talent over five rivals, including her castmate Arielle Prepetit. Michelle came up through "Snowfall" and "Insecure" before landing Eva, and she called the win "a promise fulfilled," dedicating it to the Black women and girls watching at home.
The show did not sweep. "General Hospital" took outstanding drama series for the sixth straight year and the 19th time overall, and it beat "Beyond the Gates" for writing team. Mosley, Trisha Mann-Grant, Timon Kyle Durrett, Prepetit and guest nominee Jasmine Burke all went home empty-handed, and Clifton Davis, who plays patriarch Vernon Dupree, was not nominated at all. Because the Daytime Emmys run on calendar-year eligibility, these trophies honor the show's 2025 episodes. The 2026 season is already in line for next year.
The long wait
If Tunie's win was the night's emotional center, Star Jones' was its overdue bill. Jones, a former New York City homicide prosecutor and an original co-host of "The View," won her first Emmy on her 14th nomination, sharing daytime personality, daily, with "Divorce Court" bailiff Corey Jovan. She has presided over TV's longest-running court show since September 2022, and the series tapes in Atlanta. Jones and Jovan beat the anchor desks of "Entertainment Tonight," "Extra" and "Access Hollywood."
Sherri Shepherd's win came with a twist of the knife. She took daytime talk series host over Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, Tamron Hall and the panel of "The View" for a show that no longer exists. "Sherri" was pulled from syndication after four seasons, and its final episode aired May 21. Shepherd's only previous Daytime Emmy was shared with her "View" co-hosts in 2009. This one is hers alone, and it arrived after the cancellation, not before it.
Tracee Ellis Ross waited, too. After years of Emmy nominations for "black-ish" without a win, she finally took home a statuette for "Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross," the Roku series that follows her through Morocco, Mexico and Spain. She thanked all three countries from the stage. A Black woman traveling alone, on her own terms, beat Apple's "Long Way Home" and Discovery's "Expedition Unknown." That is not a small sentence to be able to write.
Keke Palmer won outstanding daytime short form program for "Glam Through the Ages," the beauty-history miniseries she executive produces for her own KeyTV platform. It is a reminder of where the industry is heading: Palmer owns the pipe the show runs through. She was also nominated as a non-daily personality but lost to Giada De Laurentiis.
Who went home empty-handed
The wins were real. So were the losses. Hudson and Hall lost the host race. Kardea Brown's "Delicious Miss Brown" lost culinary instructional series to "Be My Guest with Ina Garten," and Brown lost culinary host to Garten as well. TV One's "Savor the City" lost culinary cultural series to PBS's "Lucky Chow." Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin were part of the losing "View" panel. Kevin Frazier, Nischelle Turner, Zuri Hall and Scott Evans lost with their entertainment news teams. In supporting actor, Lawrence Saint-Victor of "The Bold and the Beautiful," Sean Dominic of "The Young and the Restless" and Durrett lost to Roger Howarth.
Made in Atlanta
Here is the local story the national lists buried. Two of the night's Black-led wins, "Beyond the Gates" and "Divorce Court," are produced in metro Atlanta. The city that has spent a decade hosting Hollywood's tax-credit shoots just sent home Emmys for shows that center Black families and a Black judge, made by crews here.
Daytime did not discover these women Friday night. Tunie has been doing the work since 1987. Jones has been on television since the 1990s. Shepherd and Ross have been carrying shows for years. What changed is that the academy finally caught up to them.
