Jennifer Hudson snagged EGOT status Sunday night after winning a Tony award.
The one-time “American Idol” finalist – she was famously eliminated from the show before the final rounds – joins 16 other industry superstars with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony to their names.
The singer nabbed her win at the Broadway musical awards show for “A Strange Loop,” a musical that she co-produced with Mindy Kaling and Billy Porter, among others. Hudson introduced a performance from the show on Sunday night, describing the musical as a “brilliant funny masterpiece” that “exposes the heart and soul of a young artist struggling with his desires, identity and instincts he both loves and hates.”
Hudson, who won an Oscar for her role in the film “Dreamgirls,” has two Grammys under her belt (one for an R&B album and the other for the musical “The Color Purple”). She won a Daytime Emmy just last year for the animated short “Baba Yag.”
At 40 years old, she is the youngest woman to win all four awards, and joins Whoopi Goldberg as the only other Black woman to do so. Hudson is now part of an extremely selective roster of entertainment czars, rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Legend and Rita Moreno.
Hudson couldn’t have done it without her dogs, or so she joked with People Magazine in 2020 when she had only two of the four awards to her name.
“I got a dog and named it Oscar, and then I won my Oscar. And then I got a dog and named it Grammy, and then I won my Grammy,” she said. “So I think I should get some dogs and name them Emmy and Tony — and it’ll give me good luck, and I’ll win [They’re] like my good luck charms.”