The EGOT club just inducted two new members, Benji Pasek and Justin Paul

EGOT is the four-letter acronym everyone in Hollywood is obsessed with. It’s the epitome of awards success and industry respect.

Getting one is elusive, but once you have it, you’ll always be recognised as one of the greats.

EGOT stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, the four industry-awarded gongs in the American entertainment business, given to creative successes in TV, music, cinema and theatre. It must also be a competitive award, not an honorary one such as for lifetime achievement.

Over the past 65 years, only 21 people have ever achieved the EGOT, including the two artists who were inducted into its hallowed pantheon today: Benji Pasek and Justin Paul.

Pasek and Paul may not be household names to everyone but they are revered among a certain group of people: musical theatre nerds. The two, both 39, wrote original songs for La La Land, The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen.

Until today, they had the GOT — a Grammy for Dear Evan Hansen in musical theatre album, an Oscar for La La Land in original song and three Tonys, two for Dear Evan Hansen and one for A Strange Loop.

The E came along when they won the Emmy for outstanding original music and lyrics for the third season of Only Murders in the Building, for which they penned the song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It”, sung by Steve Martin on the show.

At 39 years and two months, Pasek is the second youngest ever EGOT winner, pipped by Frozen songwriter Robert Lopez who was 39 years and one week when he completed the quadrumvirate.

Collecting all four is better than catching all the Pokemon. An EGOT winner is not an official designation, but it is a coveted one; and while award-obsessives have been keeping score for decades, it entered popular conversation thanks to, what else, 30 Rock.

The Tina Fey-created comedy introduced the plot point in a fourth-season episode when Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) walked into a jewellery store and saw a very blingy necklace with a diamond-encrusted EGOT.

The jeweller told Tracy that the necklace once belonged to Miami Vice actor Philip Michael Thomas who declared in 1984 that it was his five-year ambition to complete an EGOT. Thomas never even started his alphabet soup but in 1994, he did become the face of a psychic TV network. True story.

In the fictional world of 30 Rock, Tracy would eventually claim EGOT status, but in real life, it’s not so easy.

The series had, guest-starring as herself, actual EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg, who won an Oscar in 1991 for her performance in Ghost, two (Daytime) Emmys in 2002 and 2009, the latter for hosting The View, a Grammy in 1986 for a comedy recording album and a Tony in 2002 for Thoroughly Modern Millie in best musical.

According to 30 Rock writer Kay Cannon, Goldberg had done it “the hard way”, she told The Ringer.

By that, Cannon means Goldberg’s EGOT came from four different projects at different times in her career — and not from writing music.

Like Pasek and Paul, of the 21 EGOT winners, 12 are or were musicians, songwriters and composers. It is the profession that spans across all four awards with ease.

For an actor to win a Grammy, it’s been in the spoken word recording or audiobook categories — which is how Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno, Helen Hayes, John Gielgud and Viola Davis won in.

The first EGOT was composer and producer Richard Rodgers, as in Rodgers and Hammerstein fame, and all of his gongs have been for music. He completed his EGOT in 1962, only three years after the first Grammy ceremony.

The other musicians and composers who have nabbed the honour are Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Robert Lopez, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice, John Legend, Alan Menken, Jennifer Hudson (although her Oscar was for acting in Dreamgirls) and Elton John.

On the writing/directing/producing side, EGOT winners have been Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, and Scott Rudin.

Many have come close, including these legends who died only one shot of a letter — Henry Fonda (Emmy), Stephen Sondheim (Emmy), Bob Fosse (Grammy), Julie Harris (Oscar) and Robin Williams (Tony).

While plenty more are waiting in the wings.

Among the actors who only a Tony short include Kate Winslet and Julie Andrews, while musical talents Adele, Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand and Randy Newman need to pen a winning Broadway number to have themselves inducted. It might be too late for composer John Williams, who has declared his retirement.

Those only one Oscar away from an EGOT include actors Cynthia Nixon, Cynthia Erivo, Audra McDonald, Bette Midler, Hugh Jackman, Lily Tomlin, Dick Van Dyke and Billy Porter.

Hamilton superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda is also only an Oscar off, and he looked a good shot in 2022 when “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana was neck-and-neck with Pasek and Paul’s “City of Stars” from La La Land. Miranda lost but he has written original songs for the upcoming The Lion King prequel so watch this space in 2025.

For stars lacking a Grammy, they include Liza Minnelli, Frances McDormand, Maggie Smith, Al Pacino, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. Why Irons hasn’t lent his mellifluous voice to a Grammy-winning audiobook yet is a mystery.

Fun fact: Eminem is missing a Tony. 8 Mile the Broadway musical, anyone?