Niecy Nash has been acting for nearly three decades in projects so varied and widespread, that you’d be hard-pressed to find a person in the United States who doesn’t at least recognize her face. That’s why it’s so hard to believe she won her first major award at the 75th Emmys, which happened on Monday, Jan. 16.
Aged 53, Nash walked up to the stage escorted by her wife, Jessica Betts, to the sound and sight of a roaring standing ovation, and proceeded to deliver the best speech of the night. A moment that had been a long time coming and which celebrates one of the best years in the actress’s career, with her part in Ava DuVernay’s Origin also meriting praise.
What did Niecy Nash say in her Emmys speech?
Nash won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her work as Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbor, Glenda Cleveland, in Netflix’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. It was her first-ever Primetime Emmy win of her four nominations, and after a long full-throttle career with almost 100 credits under he belt, per IMDb.
Understandably emotional, Nash addressed the audience with a triumphant “I’m a winner, baby!” before delving into her acknowledgments and thanks. The California native began by thanking God, Dahmer creator and recurrent collaborator Ryan Murphy, co-star Evan Peters, and Netflix. Nash also thanked the TV Academy voters and Betts who, the actress says, “picked her up when she was gutted from this work.”
While that is mostly standard stuff for an awards ceremony, it was the next part of Nash’s speech that really made an impact. The Emmy winner took a moment to thank herself.
“And you know who I wanna thank? I wanna thank me,” she started, leading to thunderous applause, whooping and laughter. “For believing in me and doing what they said I could not do. And I wanna say to myself in front of all you beautiful people, ‘Go on girl, with your bad self. You did that!'” And just like that, she had won the night.
Nash finished by dedicating her trophy to “every Black and Brown woman who has gone unheard yet overpoliced.” She named the real-life woman her winning performance was based on, Glenda Cleveland, who tried to alert police about Dahmer when she found one of his would-be victims, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, wandering around naked and lost in the neighborhood. The police dismissed her worries and requests, and Sinthasomphone would go on to be killed by Dahmer. Nash also singled out the late Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Texas under suspicious circumstances, and Breonna Taylor, victim of a fatal shooting by police in her own Louisville, KY home during a botched police raid.
Multiple of Nash’s industry colleagues, including Issa Rae, Taraji P. Henson, and Colman Domingo, resumed their standing ovation at this point as the Dahmer thespian concluded. “As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power, and, baby, imma do it till the day I die.” Nash finished by shouting “Momma, I won!” as her proud, tearful mother cheered from the seats of the Peacock Theater.