Master of None’s Lena Waithe first African-American woman to win Emmy for comedy writing

Lena Waithe became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy award for outstanding writing in a comedy series Sunday night.

Waithe won alongside Aziz Ansari for the second season of the Netflix original show “Master of None.” She was also the first African-American woman to be nominated in that category.

Waithe, who plays Denise in the show, gave the acceptance speech on behalf of herself and Ansari. She thanked fans for embracing “a little Indian boy from South Carolina” and “a little queer black girl from the south side of Chicago.” Waithe, who is queer, also thanked the “LGBTIA family.”

“I see each and every one of you. The things that make us different, those are our superpowers,” Waithe said. “Every day when you walk out the door put on your imaginary cape and go out there and conquer the world, because the world would not be as beautiful as it is if we weren’t in it.”

Waithe acted in season one of the show, but only began writing for the second season. She and Ansari wrote “Thanksgiving,” an episode about what it was like for Denise to come out in a family of color. The episode is set on Thanksgiving Day over a number of years and chronicles Denise’s journey telling her mother she is gay.

“Lena’s scripts are personal. Almost anything she writes, I don’t care if she’s writing about a white girl living in 1930s England, if she’s writing the script, there’s going to be something that’s Lena, that came from lived experience,” friend Ashley Blaine Featherson told BuzzFeed.

Waithe had always wanted to be a television writer, and studied screenwriting at Columbia College in Chicago.

When asked by BuzzFeed earlier this year if she thought she would win the Emmy, Waithe said “We’ll see if they think it’s worthy.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2017 at 7:19 PM with the headline "Master of None’s Lena Waithe first African-American woman to win Emmy for comedy writing."