New Delhi, Sept. 15 -- Tramell Tillman made history on Sunday as he became the first Black actor to win an Emmy. He took the trophy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Severance.

"My first acting coach was tough, y'all," Tillman, wearing an all-white tuxedo, said from the stage. "But all great mothers are."

He looked out to his mother in the audience and told her, "You were there for me where no one else was, and no one else would show up."

Once a pre-med student in college studying to be an orthopedic surgeon, Tillman also became the first Black man to earn a MFA in acting from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2014.

"Severance," the Orwellian office drama about people who surgically split their psyches into...