Betty Gilpin Wins First Emmy, Recites Rhyming Poem and Discusses Career

Betty Gilpin, 40, won her first Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sarah Westcott Warren in a 1702-set backstory episode of "Widow's Bay." She accepted the award by reciting a rhyming poem that included the line, "To be cringe and élitist, which you're free to find fault in / Let's all lean toward Sam Shepard and less toward Sam Altman." The daughter of actors Jack Gilpin and Ann McDonough, Gilpin graduated from Fordham in 2008 and broke through in 2017 with Netflix's "GLOW," playing a 1980s Las Vegas wrestler. She recently portrayed First Lady Lucretia Garfield in "Death by Lightning" opposite Michael Shannon, and appears in Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning" and Season 2 of "The Lowdown" with Ethan Hawke. Last year, she became the first actor to replace Cole Escola in Broadway's "Oh, Mary!" She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two young daughters. In an interview, Gilpin discussed her Emmy experience, the two unaired episodes of "GLOW" Season 4 lost to COVID, her childhood in South Street Seaport and Litchfield County, and her approach to acting. She also mentioned her upcoming Netflix series "The Roman," about a Las Vegas casino, and her hope to shift her life's ratio from panic to imagination.