Dick Van Dyke better head back to Days of Our Lives if he wants to reclaim the title of oldest-ever Daytime Emmy winner. Now that record belongs to another near-centenarian: Sir David Attenborough.
At the 52nd Daytime Emmy Awards on Friday, Attenborough won the Outstanding Daytime Personality – Non-Daily category for his work on Netflix’s Secret Lives of Orangutans.
In so doing, Attenborough beat Living With Leopards’ Brad Bestelink; The Fixers’ Andi Sweeney Blanco, Courtney Dober, Rob North, and Kirin Stone; Shark Beach With Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast’s Anthony Mackie; and Martha Gardens’ Martha Stewart.
And at 99 years old, Attenborough is now the oldest-ever winner of a Daytime Emmy Award, breaking the record Van Dyke set last year when he won Guest Performance in a Daytime Drama Series for his work on Days of Our Lives, as The Hollywood Reporter notes.
Friday’s win marks Attenborough’s first Daytime Emmy Award. He previously won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator three years in a row — in 2018 for Blue Planet II, in 2019 for Our Planet, and in 2020 for Seven Worlds One Planet.
His other victories include five BAFTA Awards, three News & Documentary Emmy Awards (a Lifetime Achievement honor and two Outstanding Nature Programming wins, one in 2011 for First Life and another in 2016 for Rise of the Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates), and a 2020 Critics’ Choice Documentary Award win for narrating David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet.
In Secret Lives of Orangutans, the British biologist and broadcaster reintroduces viewers to a prominent ape species. “Orangutans are not just one of our closest relatives, they’re perhaps more relatable to us than any other great ape,” Netflix says in a press release. “Narrated by David Attenborough, this film follows a remarkable group of orangutans in the pristine jungles of Sumatra. At the centre of this story is 8-year-old Eden, who’s about to embark on the most challenging moment of her life.”
Attenborough is set to turn 100 on May 8, 2026, while Van Dyke is less than two months from that milestone birthday: He’ll hit 100 on December 13.