Yara Shahidi Left the Emmys Early, but She Had a Pretty Good Excuse

Yara Shahidi clearly has her priorities in check, and we should only hope to have as much self-control as she does. The Grown-ish star and Harvard student was in fact present at this year’s Emmys, but she chose to leave early in the evening to tend to her college responsibilities. She told Entertainment Tonight that she even requested to present a trophy early in the show. “I do fly out tonight to make it to class in time,” she shared. “The lovely people at The Academy really helped me out because I was like, ‘Guys, I have a hard out to make this flight.'”

Yara, who was originally accepted into Harvard in 2017, has always taken her studies seriously even while juggling her acting career. In a 2018 interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she revealed that her plans were to go off to college and become a history professor, which is why she’s a social studies major. “It’s a combination of history and economics and anthropology,” she explained. “And then, I’m taking African American studies as well. I still want to teach, but I also describe what I want to do as being policy adjacent. So, I guess I want to be next to Capitol Hill.”

Outside of presenting the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series at the ceremony, Yara also attended the award ceremony to support her Black-ish family, which was up for six trophies. Though the show wasn’t able to snag an award this year, Yara was still glad to be in attendance for the in-person show. “It is really exciting,” she told ET. “So many moments like these where we get to celebrate our work have kind of been suspended because of the pandemic, among many other important things.” According to her, the evening was “just a great moment to look at what we have done.”