Edebiri dished on how her experience growing up as a child of immigrants shaped her career.
Ayo Edebiri opened up about how her parents have impacted her career journey after winning her first Emmy at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday.
The actress, who won for her role as Sydney Adamu on the hit Hulu show “The Bear,” thanked her mother, who is Barbadian, and her father, who is Nigerian, during her acceptance speech. While speaking with theGrio’s Mariel Turner backstage, Edebiri shared how her upbringing as a first-generation American influenced her career.
“I mean, I think they probably wanted me to do something in medicine,” Edebiri jokingly said. “But I feel like they’re happy with the results at this present moment. My parents were always taking me to see shows or always supporting me if I was doing theater [or] music. We grew up going to church and so that was also an environment where there was a lot of music and a lot of performing, and they were always really supportive of that.”
She continued, “People who have immigrant parents can relate to that sentiment of like, ‘they want me to be a doctor or a lawyer.’ But when I told my parents I was going to art school, they were like, ‘yeah, you know that we’ve been raising you? We do, like, know who you are, right? This isn’t a surprise.’”
Edebiri acknowledged her parents on stage while accepting her Emmy a few moments earlier, praising her mother and father for her upbringing.
“I’m so incredibly grateful for this for many reasons, but the main one is this show is about found family and real family,” she shared after the room burst into applause. “My parents are here tonight, and I’m making them sit kind of far from me ’cause I’m a bad kid. I love you guys so much, thank you for loving me, and letting me feel beautiful and Black and proud of all of that. Probably not a dream to immigrate to this country and have your child say, ‘I wanna do improv.’”
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