11th Annual Broady Award Winners

5/24/2020

Hall of Fame Legend: Ted Danson

If you were to make a list of most accomplished actors in television history you wouldn’t get to too many names before coming across Ted Danson. Danson’s first starring network TV role came as former alcoholic Boston Red Sox pitcher turned bartender Sam Malone in the classic NBC’s comedy “Cheers” from 1982-1993. Danson would win two Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his performance as the funny ladies’ man. Most recently Danson has stolen the show as Michael, the evil architect turned good demon in NBC’s “The Good Place,” which wrapped its four season run earlier this year. Danson would garner two more Emmy nominations for his portrayal of Michael moving his career total of Emmy nominations to 17 (among the most nominated actors in Emmy history). In between “Cheers” and “The Good Place,” Danson also found network TV success as the cantankerous doctor John Becker in CBS’ “Becker,” where he gained a Golden Globe nomination, and as the final lead in the long-running CBS crime drama “CSI” in the show’s final few seasons.

Hall of Fame Show: Will & Grace

“Will & Grace” is one of the few shows to not only have one successful run on network television, but two. The series first had an incredibly successful run on NBC from 1998-2006 in which the series won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2000 and each of its four cast members (Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally) won at least one Emmy for their performances. The show returned to NBC in 2017 where it had another successful three season run that wrapped this April. While the show is certainly one of the funniest comedies to ever air on network TV it’s undoubtedly more importance in television history as being the first popular series to feature not one, but two homosexual characters in its main cast (Ellen DeGeneres famously came out in an episode of her series “Ellen” late in its run). Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told The Washington Post in 2012 that “Will & Grace” “probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has ever done so far,” when it came to LGBT issues