For Aja Naomi King, an Emmy Nomination Is a Seismic Event

A few minutes into a conversation with Aja Naomi King, a first time Emmy nominee for her graceful, purposeful supporting turn in the Apple TV+ limited series “Lessons in Chemistry,” the earth began to move. “Oh my God. Earthquake! Earthquake!” King said. Once the ground quieted, she collected herself.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just really got the fullness of that shake.”

An Emmy nomination? That has been earthshaking, too. King’s Instagram post about the news is an outpouring of exuberant run-on sentences punctuated by a heart emoji. “If you made it to the bottom of this post you deserve an award,” she wrote.

King, 39, graduated from the School of Drama at Yale in 2010. She had been working professionally for over a decade, most notably in the tangy ABC procedural “How to Get Away With Murder,” when she was cast in “Lessons in Chemistry.” Based on the best seller by Bonnie Garmus, the show tells the story of Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson), a onetime chemist who becomes the host of a 1960s cooking show.

King plays Elizabeth’s close friend Harriet. Described in the novel as a middle-aged white woman, Harriet was reimagined as a young Black mother and an aspiring lawyer who fights to save Los Angeles’s Sugar Hill neighborhood from the incursions of the freeway system.

When Elizabeth, concerned for her career, declines to participate in the fight, King’s Harriet confronts her. “You’re always talking about the things that keep women down, but who does that include?” Harriet says.

While King was initially concerned that Harriet would be a mere foil for Elizabeth, she was gratified by what she described as “the fullness of Harriet’s Black womanhood” that the show allowed for.