Actor Dawnn Lewis and director Hanelle Culpepper among Star Trek nominations for NAACP Image Awards
The 52nd NAACP Image Awards will take place in March 2021
FEBRUARY 3, 2021 - Star Trek has been nominated for a total of three NAACP Image Awards. According to a piece in Variety, the nominations were announced virtually on the NAACP Image Awards’ Instagram yesterday afternoon.
The NAACP Image Awards celebrate outstanding Black achievements in film, television, music and literature. The 2021 awards are the 52nd annual awards, and the first in which Star Trek has been nominated, at least since Star Trek: Discovery premiered.
The three awards that Star Trek was nominated for are: Outstanding Animated Series (for Star Trek: Lower Decks), Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Television) (for Dawnn Lewis, also from Star Trek: Lower Decks), and Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series (for Hanelle Culpepper from the Star Trek: Picard episode “Remembrance”).
Lower Decks has stiff competition from the likes of Netflix’s Big Mouth, AppleTV+’s Central Park, Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins, and Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Dawnn Lewis is up against Aisha Tyler for FX’s Archer, Courtney B. Vance for PBS’s Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story, Deon Cole for Netflix’s Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and Laya DeLeon Hayes from Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins.
Likewise, Hanelle Culpepper and Star Trek: Picard are in a league with other big hitters: Cheryl Dunye and Misha Green for directing episodes of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Nzingha Stewart for directing Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, and Steve McQueen for directing Amazon’s Small Axe.
The nominations come amid a strategy of increasing diverse representation at ViacomCBS. Last year saw the adoption of diversity targets for both streaming and broadcast productions at CBS, as well as the creation of a joint production venture between the network and the NAACP.
The 52nd NAACP Image Awards will air on BET (a ViacomCBS network) on March 27th at 8pm ET, with some categories being live streamed prior to the event, on March 22nd - 26th.
