Ahmed took home\u00a0the Outstanding Lead Actor award for his role as\u00a0Nasir Khan, a young Pakistani man embroiled in a murder investigation, in HBO\u2019s \u2018The Night of\u2019 on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a tremendous honour just to be recognised alongside so many inspiring actors who I\u2019ve watched for so long,\u201d he said as he accepted his award.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say it is always strange reaping the rewards of a story based on real world suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if this show has shown a light on some of the prejudice in our societies, xenophobia, some of the injustice in our justice system, then maybe that is something,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
When asked if his win would lead to a more diverse industry, he said, “I don\u2019t know if any one person\u2019s win of an award, or one person snagging one role, or one person doing very well changes something that\u2019s a systemic issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s something that happens slowly over time.”<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cIn terms of US and the UK, I\u2019m really proud to be a Londoner. I\u2019m really proud to be from the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m also really aware that actors of colour often have more opportunity in the US, but I think ultimately now we see that TV in particular is a global medium.\u201d<\/p>\n
On whether he observed any changed in the kinds of roles being written for Asians in Hollywood, he responded, \u201cI think what we\u2019re starting to see is more awareness around how beneficial it can be to tell a diverse range of stories and to tell them in a way that\u2019s authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other Asian to take home an Emmy was Archie Panjabi who in 2010 won the \u2018Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series\u2019\u00a0award or her role Kalinda Sharma in\u00a0\u2018The Good Wife\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British Pakistani actor\u00a0Riz Ahmed\u00a0has made history by becoming the first Asian male to win an acting award at the\u00a0Primetime Emmy Awards. Ahmed took home\u00a0the Outstanding Lead Actor award for his role as\u00a0Nasir Khan, a young Pakistani man embroiled in a murder investigation, in HBO\u2019s \u2018The Night of\u2019 on Sunday evening. \u201cThis is a tremendous honour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,54,112,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-desi_masala","category-desixpress","category-top-stories","category-tv-soap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}