Sir David Attenborough, 99, becomes oldest daytime Emmy winner

Sir David Attenborough has become the oldest person ever to win a Daytime Emmy, marking another extraordinary milestone in a broadcasting career that has spanned more than seven decades.

The 99-year-old naturalist and filmmaker took home the award for Outstanding Daytime Personality – Nondaily for his narration of Netflix’s Secret Lives of Orangutans, beating fellow nominees including Martha Stewart and Anthony Mackie.

Attenborough’s win, announced at the 52nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Pasadena, California, breaks the record set only last year by Dick Van Dyke, who won at 98 for his guest appearance on Days of Our Lives.

Although Attenborough did not attend the ceremony, his win was greeted with a standing ovation. The award also extended the remarkable legacy of the broadcaster often described as “the voice of the natural world”.

Secret Lives of Orangutans follows a multigenerational family of apes through the dense rainforests of Sumatra, tracing their behaviour, communication and resilience in a landscape under threat. The film also won Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Directing Team for a Single-Camera Daytime Nonfiction Program and Outstanding Music Direction and Composition.

The documentary’s quiet intimacy — blending long-form observation with Attenborough’s warm narration — reflects a hallmark of his style: to reveal the emotional depth of nature without sentimentality.

Since joining the BBC in 1952, Attenborough has defined the modern nature documentary. From Zoo Quest in the 1950s to Life on Earth (1979) and The Living Planet (1984), his work reimagined wildlife television as a global, cinematic experience. More recent collaborations, such as Planet Earth II and Netflix’s Our Planet, have reached hundreds of millions of viewers and brought environmental storytelling into the streaming era.

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1985, he has won three Primetime Emmys and numerous BAFTAs, and holds the rare distinction of having received the award across black-and-white, colour, HD and 4K formats — effectively spanning every major technological era of television.

At 99, Attenborough shows no sign of slowing down. He will turn 100 in May 2026 and has said he will continue to work “as long as people still want to hear from me.”

In a 2021 interview with Signature Luxury Travel & Style ahead of his 95th birthday, he reflected: “I have the greatest job in the world. What a privileged time I’ve had. People provide me with wonderful pictures of things we’ve never seen before and ask me to write a sentence or two on it. Better than sitting in the corner knitting.”

His enduring curiosity has earned him admiration far beyond broadcasting. Over recent years, his advocacy on climate change has made him a moral voice for the planet, speaking at the UN Climate Summit and COP26 conference.

The Emmy win underscores how Attenborough continues to bridge generations — inspiring both filmmakers and scientists while reminding audiences of the delicate relationship between humans and the natural world.

Critics have long credited him with transforming public understanding of ecology. “There are few people alive who have done more to shape the world’s empathy for nature,” noted The New York Times in its coverage of the award.

For Attenborough, the recognition is less about personal legacy and more about attention to the planet’s future. As he said during the release of Our Planet II:

“What happens next is up to us all.”

At an age when most public figures would have long retired, the broadcaster remains one of the most trusted and beloved voices in television. His record-breaking Daytime Emmy — the first of his career — stands as a fitting tribute to that rare blend of authority, curiosity and compassion that has made him the face, and conscience, of nature itself.

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Sir David Attenborough, 99, becomes oldest daytime Emmy winner