Uzo Aduba is not stranger to Emmys. She has already won three of them – two for her breakthrough role as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Netflix’s prison drama “Orange is the new black” And one for her powerful performance as a political pioneer Shirley Chisholm in the FX mini series “Mrs. America.”
Aduba’s latest Emmy nomination, the sixth of her career, is for her work in Netflix short-lived White House as “The Residence”, where she depicts the eccentric, witty and damn good consulting detective Cordelia Cupp, whose urgent eye for details, extreme confidence and unambiguous passion for bird watchers. Cordelia is introduced to solve the murder of the White House’s manager of Usher AB Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito), whose death catapulate her to a complicated web of Oddball personalities.
But that does not mean that Aduba has become accustomed to the awards – far from it, actually. “It’s wild,” said the 44-year-old actress during a new zoom interview. “It’s literally that feeling of,” wow, it’s crazy. “” Aduba is because of making her own Emmy history if she would win over the sitting Jean Smart, Ayo Edebiri, Quinta Brunson and Kristen Bell for outstanding principal actress in a comedy series. She is in line to bind four times winner Alfre Woodard and Regina King for most actors Emmys served by a black artist. “Wild Is the word I continue to use for this. That’s my word this year. “
So it comes with a little bitterness that the door is now permanently closed on “The Residence”, which received another three nods for production design, visual effects and its main title of theme music. Prior to July 2, after a season (just over a week after the Emmy vote ended), creator Paul William Davies referred to the possibility of Adubas Cordelia solving a new murder mystery outside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in season 2.
“We had an incredible time to do that show. It’s only in the end. Our (group) chat is still going on. We’re still hanging out,” said Aduba. Although “It would have been wonderful to see what other adventures Cordelia would continue, the truth is in the matter, I always feel that my characters continue anyway – I think Suzanne is currently out and doing fantastic things. I never think their stories end. So I continue to sit with the basic truth that I let my imagination live with.”
You are one of the few actors who have been recognized by the TV Academy in both the comedy and drama categories. Does every nomination feel different from you?
Yes. I think the first of something always feels like it’s in another stratosphere. Especially for my first (Emmy nomination and profit for “Orange is the new black”) it was so much wrapped in the first – my first show, all these things. I had so little knowledge about what I had gone into. It all was as if you were driving a car on a highway and it whips past you. Did you see that? It’s amazing!
I have different relationships with every experience when I have grown as a human being, an actor, a person who works in this business and even when my life has grown. Each individual has their own experiences that none of us are interested in that are happy and challenging, and then there are things that we all experienced collectively five years ago (with pandemic). But I think that when you start to live a little more, they all take a different form because life has informed the experience in different ways that make the celebration of the moment different. And the form of the work is already added by these experiences. Because of all the experiences, what I have developed is an even greater appreciation in order to do this.
Piggybacking of it, how has your perceived experience and your present place in life shaped your understanding of Cordelia Cupp? Could you have done this role at the beginning of your career?
That’s a fantastic question. You know, I needed this part to get to me in an instant when I was a little longer in the spine. When it relates to work, I am not sure that at an early stage in my career, I would have trusted stillness as an act, a strong act. It actually requires that you have lived a little to know what it is to be strong in a single choice. I would have thought that I needed to do something all the time with Cordelia when, number one, that’s not what is written, and number two, how Paul William Davies shaped the story is that she is a Birder. Her hobby is to be still, and she applies that hobby to what it is as she does. I’m not sure I would have had confidence in myself to just practice the exercise, because that’s kind of how I think about acting. What is this action? What should this part be? An exercise in silence and (song) that is enough.
You have mentioned before how different you are from Cordelia in everything, from way to telling style – she really loves her metaphors and she can be extremely sincere. What taught you to live in her skin?
You’ve seen me touch me like 19 times when I talked. (Laugh) What I learned from her is that you can sometimes just sit back and let the news come to you. You don’t always have to deliver the news – just let the information come to you. I think it is an exercise in journalism as I understand it. A departure for me is that I probably don’t say everything she will say. (Laugh) She says something and it’s like “what did she just say about my hair?” And she’s already on the next thing. She will tell every drop and drop off what she thinks.
I needed this part to get to me in a moment when I was a little longer in the spine. When it relates to work, I am not sure that at an early stage in my career, I would have trusted stillness as an act, a strong act.
What I really got from her is the ability to listen. Details are important, and that’s how she splits things together. To listen when the clock goes off. She raised my ear a bit to really listen to the details about what someone says. But the big paragraph is that it is ok to just solve and receive.
She is also a character that is built up as the world’s best detective, which has a pressure level attached to it. How did you live up to that reputation?
The key part was not to have awe when she enters the room. That for her, every place she ever is – it doesn’t matter if it’s the White House or Vatican – it’s a crime scene. The rate before we see her bird watching on the southern lawn, she might take breath, and that would not be because she is stepping in the White House; This is because she is getting her dream to fulfill (Teddy Roosevelts) bird list, which she could never have achieved if she had no reason to be in the house.
At the end of the day she knows what she is doing is something very important, and that is to solve murder. It gave her the spine to be as she would be with chief advisor Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino) or the president or the Australian Prime Minister. She is not frightened because the truth is in her world, she is the best. I wanted her from minute, to know that she belongs.
There is a gripping moment in the series when Cordelia tells her nephew of her first case-finding her sister’s missing favorite sock, a gift from their brother-after telling her that his mother calls her “difficult” and “single.” It is such an important scene because it reveals who Cordelia is, how she works and why she is so settled in how she is. Was that scene eye -opening for you?
I was so grateful to Paul for writing it. I thought that scene told two stories. Number one, how she holds a face no one can read. In that section you realize that there is a huge loss in that family (with the death of Cordelia’s brother), and what I was broken from it was, I wonder who Cordelia was two clicks before it happened. People handle grief in all different ways, and maybe she can handle their emotions. Imagine she can’t actually be an emotional person; She may actually know many things and in order not to feel these things she has to put a lid on it, to keep this down because if it even comes with breast level it is too much. And that’s how she could survive that moment, and it continued during her and her sister’s life.
The other part of it to me was that there are different ways to love, and just because she does not love the same way and works as her sister does not mean that she cannot love or has not shown expression of love. That story, I thought, was so revealing about who Cordelia is and the size of her heart; She would use this that she knows she is good at – to remember details – to give that level of importance to her sister’s most valued objects because it takes her back to the valued time when the family was whole. These socks probably meant something to Cordelia too, and she needs her sister to be whole. She can’t lose anything more.
Is there a specific section you hang on the hat?
I would say (section) 8 is the strongest in terms of what it meant to me. We find out who did it. We find out how Cordelia found out. In that section, Paul did such a good job of turning us into her mind. She was interested in finding out who did it, but she was also very invested in “The Real Housewives of the White House”, do you know? (Laugh) As, why do all these people do all these crazy things?
She secretly enjoyed all the gossip.
Yes! She wanted tea. She wanted to know what happened. (Laugh) This is the only section where everyone is together and it was really satisfying. I spent seven episodes working with them all – Randall (Park), Giancarlo, Susan (Kelechi Watson), Edwina (Findley), Jason (Lee), Ken, Molly (Griggs) – but it was the first time I saw the collection together. We had each been in our individual silos, but to be able to meet it made it really fun. They met Detective Cupp (in the beginning), and in 8 they met Cordelia. You can see why she loves her job and she is really excited to go through this thing, and they got to meet the real woman, which I liked.
Ever since you broke through with “Orange is the new black,“ You’ve done your time in front of the camera. How would you summarize the last 12 years?
More than I’ve ever dreamed that it could be. I didn’t dream all this. I dreamed too small.
This story first ran down to the Wire Comedy issue for Thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the question here.
