Rosie Perez Returns to Primetime Emmys 28 Years After Last ‘In Living Color’ Nomination

After 28 years, Rosie Perez will be making her way back to the Emmy Awards next month for the fourth time as a nominee. The actress managed to nab a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work on HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant. Perez responded to the nomination news on Tuesday morning via Twitter. “Yay!!!!! Thank you so much! I’m screaming right now on set,” she wrote, adding the hashtag “tears of joy.”

“Seriously blown away and beyond honored [and] so appreciative!!!” she added, before sending congratulations to her co-star Kaley Cuoco (who earned a lead actress nomination), showrunner Steve Yockey, and Susanna Fogel. She also received some praise from friends and former co-workers like Justina Machado (One Day at a Time) and In Living Color alum David Alan Grier.

Perez and Grier’s friendship goes way back. The two previously worked together on Keenan Ivory Wayans’ In Living Color where Perez starred as one of the Fly Girls who danced on the show. Perez was a choreographer for four seasons, working with Cari French, Carrie Ann Inaba, Deidre Lang, Lisa Marie Todd, and Michelle Whitney-Morrison, and Jennifer Lopez. She earned three Emmy nominations for outstanding choreography.

Despite her going on to build herself into a household name with a series of roles in memorable movies like Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, White Men Can’t Jump, and more recently Birds of Prey, this year’s nomination serves as her first for acting. While it may have taken her a while to get back to the Emmys stage, the actress hasn’t spent too much time worrying about her career path. “You know what her problem is? She compares, she compares her career to everybody else and she’s so bitter,” she recalled her friend saying for Variety. “It’s the worst thing an actor can do is to compare. Your career is your career, your path is your path. That’s all you need to be concerned about because otherwise, you’re just going to be a miserable person.”