Sir David Attenborough became the oldest person to win a Daytime Emmy on Friday, when he took home the award at age 99.
Attenborough, the British naturalist and broadcaster who will turn 100 in May, broke the record set last year by Dick Van Dyke, who at 98 won for an appearance on “Days of Our Lives.” Attenborough secured the Emmy for outstanding daytime personality — nondaily, for his work on Netflix’s “Secret Lives of Orangutans.”
The 52nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards were in held in Pasadena, Calif. Attenborough, who prevailed over Martha Stewart and Anthony Mackie, among others, did not attend the ceremony, according to The Associated Press.
“Secret Lives of Orangutans,” a documentary that follows a multigenerational family of apes through their treetop triumphs and travails in Sumatra, also won Emmys for outstanding directing team for a single-camera daytime nonfiction program and for outstanding music direction and composition.
Attenborough has produced documentary films since the 1950s. He is best known for his work exploring wildlife, ecology and climate change, including the 13-part series “Life on Earth” that was broadcast in 1979. Other prominent work includes the BBC documentary “The Living Planet” and the eight-part Netflix series “Our Planet.”
The award on Friday was Attenborough’s first Daytime Emmy. He has won three Primetime Emmys and been nominated for that award a dozen times. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1985.
In an interview in 2021 with Signature Luxury Travel & Style, an Australian publication, ahead of his 95th birthday, Attenborough said he would retire when people stopped wanting to hear from him.
“I have the greatest job in the world,” he said. “What a privileged time I’ve had. People provide me with wonderful pictures of things we’ve never seen before and ask me to write a sentence or two on it. Better than sitting in the corner knitting.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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