EGOT watch: Composer Kris Bowers would reach level 3 if he wins Grammy for ‘The Color Purple’
There are nine legendary stars who only need a Grammy to achieve the EGOT grand slam of show business awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (see the gallery at the bottom of this post). None of them were on the list of 2025 Grammy nominees, though, when they were announced on Friday morning, but there is a nominee this year who could get three quarters of the way there if he wins: composer Kris Bowers.
Bowers is nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for his work on the movie musical adaptation of “The Color Purple.” It’s the third nomination for the composer, who previously contended for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for “Blue Skies” in 2020 and then in the score soundtrack race in 2022 for the Netflix series “Bridgerton.” A victory this year for “Color Purple” would put him just a Tony away from achieving EGOT status.
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The first prize he picked up was the Emmy. He won a Daytime Emmy in 2017 for Best Music Direction and Composition for the children’s animated special “The Snowy Day.” Then he was nominated for four Primetime Emmys between 2019 and 2021 for composing “When They See Us,” “Mrs. America,” “Bridgerton,” and the main title theme music for “Bridgerton,” but he didn’t collect any of those prizes.
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Then came the Oscar. But even though he’s best known for his musical accomplishments, he hasn’t actually been nominated yet for composing a score. His two nominations were for Best Documentary Short Film. He earned his first for “A Concerto is a Conversation” (2020), which traces the Bowers family lineage through Kris’s grandfather. That award went instead to “Colette,” about the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. But Bowers prevailed on his second try, claiming the award for “The Last Repair Shop” (2023), which profiles the craftspeople who repair Los Angeles public school students’ instruments free of cost.
Winning the Grammy will be no walk in the park, however. He didn’t receive an Oscar nom for his “Color Purple” score, but one of his Grammy rivals, Laura Karpman for “American Fiction,” did, so we already know she has support from one group of industry peers. The rest of the field is no less formidable. Hans Zimmer is nominated for “Dune: Part Two” following his bid three years ago for “Dune: Part One”; he has won four Grammys throughout his career. Also with four career Grammys is Trent Reznor, who with two-time Grammy champ Atticus Ross composed “Challengers.” And Ross has an additional bid with Nick Chuba and Leopold Ross for their Emmy-nominated score from “Shōgun.”
If you think Bowers will win, you can make your predictions now for Best Score Soundtrack in our predictions center. We’ll continue to add categories to our Grammys predictions event in the coming days.
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