Emmys 2020: Regina King and Uzo Aduba’s Breonna Taylor T-Shirts Said Everything

On Sunday night, Regina King posted a photo of her posing in a sumptuous Schiaparelli Couture gown to her Instagram, a few hours after she won an Emmy for her performance in HBO’s Watchmen. But when she accepted the award via video chat during the Emmys telecast, she was wearing something much simpler: a hot pink suit also from Schiaparelli and a T-shirt that featured Breonna Taylor’s face.

Over the past few years, King has had an exceptional run at award shows, winning three previous Emmys and an Oscar, and her gowns and jewelry are usually luxurious and historically-minded. Accepting the award from her own home gave King an opportunity to turn the rules of award fashion on their head and make a different kind of statement.

King wasn’t the only nominee who used the slightly relaxed dress code—the official mandate was "come as you are, but make an effort"—as an opportunity for overt political expression. Mrs. America’s Uzo Aduba, who won the best supporting actress in a limited series award for her portrayal of presidential contender Shirley Chisholm, wore a shirt with Taylor’s name. Sterling K. Brown wore a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, and Watchmen’s showrunner Damon Lindelof wore one that said “Remember Tulsa ’21,” a reference to the racist massacre in that city that was depicted in the show’s first episode. The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper wore a shirt that read “Good Trouble,” a reference to John Lewis’s famous quotation. It also came in a slightly more irreverent form when Insecure’s Yvonne Orji showed off a fist shaved into the left side of her head.

While political statements have never been totally absent from awards season, the last few years have seen a new wave of red carpet activism. In 2018, nearly every single show saw sartorial messaging, from a black-dress code in support of #MeToo at the Golden Globes, to Time’s Up pins and orange ribbons for gun safety at the Oscars. Those efforts waned a bit int he past year, with notable exceptions like Joaquin Phoenix, who wore a single Stella McCartney tux to every event during his Joker awards run as a statement on sustainable fashion.

After six months of national turmoil from the pandemic and protests for racial justice, it seemed inevitable that the reconfigured Emmy ceremony on Sunday night would go to some lengths to address the moment. A pretty high proportion of the night’s speeches urged viewers to vote, but the most powerful statements came when actors took a step back from glamour and let their shirts do the talking.

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