Tamara Tunie won her first Emmy on Friday night, for playing Anita Dupree, the matriarch of a Black family at the center of “Beyond the Gates.” The CBS drama is billed as the first Black daytime soap opera in 35 years, and it is not yet two years old.
Tunie took Outstanding Lead Performer in a Daytime Drama Series, Actress, at the 53rd Daytime Emmy Awards at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. She was nominated alongside her castmate Karla Mosley. When the nominations came out in July, it was the first time two Black actresses had been nominated together in that lead category, as theGrio reported. It was the first nomination for each of them.
“Beyond the Gates” debuted Feb. 24, 2025. It is set in an affluent Black gated community outside Washington, D.C., and follows the Dupree family. Michele Val Jean, who worked on “Generations” in 1991, created it, and CBS developed it with the NAACP. It is produced in Atlanta. The show reached the Emmys with 15 nominations in its first year of eligibility.
It did not win the top prize. “General Hospital” took Outstanding Daytime Drama Series, and its Genie Francis received a Lifetime Achievement Award for 50 years on the show. But Tunie was not the only winner from “Beyond the Gates”: Ambyr Michelle won Outstanding Emerging Talent in a Daytime Drama Series.
Other Black winners on the night included Sherri Shepherd, who took Outstanding Daytime Talk Series Host for “Sherri,” and Star Jones, who won Outstanding Daytime Personality, Daily, with Corey Jovan for “Divorce Court.” It was Jones’s first Daytime Emmy.
CBS has renewed “Beyond the Gates” for two more seasons.
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