‘Greatest minds of all time’: 2 musical prodigies who helped Hugh Jackman become a 4-time Golden Globe nominee just became EGOTs

The EGOT club just welcomed two new members, whose work in previous films and television shows has contributed to fellow nominations for the likes of Hugh Jackman. 

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songwriting duo known as Pasek and Paul, became the 20th and 21st person to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, picking up the first award for their work on the crime dramedy series, Only Murders in the Building. 

Pasek and Paul collected the Creative Arts Emmy Award for best original music and lyrics for “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”, which featured in an episode of the Selena Gomez-starring series and beat out fellow songs from shows like Girls5eva, Saturday Night Live, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and True Detective: Night Country. 

While, for those more phonetically inclined, it might’ve been nice for the pair to collect the EGOT in order (call me meticulous), Pasek and Paul’s road to achieving the feat wasn’t linear. The duo previously won in the best song category at the Academy Awards for the La La Land song “City of Stars”, and before that took home the win for best musical theatre album with Dear Evan Hansen at the Grammys. 

The latter musical also saw the pair round out the EGOT feat with a Tony for best original score. “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” was co-written by EGT winner (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it) Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, both of whom were thanked during Pasek and Paul Emmys acceptance speech.

“It’s obviously thrilling and very wild to think about getting to do it alongside two of our heroes who gave us our very first job in television,” Paul said. For their part, some fans reacted to the win by describing Pail and Pasek as the “Greatest minds of all time.”

The genius of Pasek and Paul has coincidentally contributed to award wins and nominations for their collaborators. The duo penned the 2017 movie musical The Greatest Showman, which saw star Jackman receive one of his four nominations at the Golden Globes. While he ultimately lost out that year to James Franco, he did previously win the best actor gong for fellow musical Les Misérables in 2012. 

That means Jackman is just one award shy of being an EGOT winner, having received everything but the Oscar award (did you catch that, Academy?). 

Before Paul and Pasek, the most recent EGOT winner was Sir Elton John, who reached the feat with his Emmy win earlier this year. Other famous names who have joined the coveted EGOT club include Viola Davis, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, and Whoopi Goldberg.

In any case, perhaps the EGOT title should be reworked, as the acronym more sounds like a bacteria formed in old milk than it does a coveted accolade counter.  Then again, GOTE doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, either.