Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Uzo Aduba

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

Uzo Aduba is an actress best known for her roles in television shows like Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black and Hulu’s Mrs. America, but her talents extend beyond the screen and into the kitchen, where she deftly cooks up the Nigerian staples she was raised on in Boston’s outer suburbs.Throughout her childhood, Uzo and her siblings learned to cook alongside their mother, who taught them how to create Nigerian dishes like jollof and fufu. Although she loved her mother’s delicious food, at times Uzo also felt embarrassed by it; like many immigrant children, she faced probing questions from the other kids at the lunch table. But it was her mother’s persistent encouragement that helped Uzo celebrate her Nigerian heritage, and a special red hot recipe for red stew that connects her to it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There was a time when my name was thought to be difficult to pronounce. And so in our kitchen, my mom was cooking and I came and I asked her, I was like, Mommy, can you call me Zoe? And she stopped, like the world stopped and just turned and looked at me and she was like, why? And I said, because they say it's too hard to say, oh,za, maka. And without skipping a beat, she was just like, I think I kind of want to say. to say Chikovsky and Dostoyevsky and Michelangelo and Ikeland to say Osamaika and went right back to cooking. That was the beginning end of that conversation. And at the time, I was like, what was a Dostoyevsky? Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're

shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids. I'm Michelle Norris. Today, my guest is Uzu Aduba, the actress who's played a variety of roles in. in such a compelling way that you're absolutely convinced that she's actually the appropriately named inmate, Crazy Eyes and Orange is the New Black, or the groundbreaking politician Shirley Chisholm in Mrs. America, the cranky and intrepid investigator and painkillers, or the psychologist who could use a few therapy sessions herself in a series called In Treatment. A three-time Emmy Award winner, Uso is one of only two actors to win an Emmy in both the comedy and drama categories for the same role. I'm a big fan of her work. And so I was eager to find out what the real Uzo Aduba was like.

And it turns out she's funny and sharp and she's a great storyteller. Her own life story begins in Medfield, Massachusetts as the child of Nigerian immigrants. She grew up in a loud and loving household, five kids, various pets, parents who work long hours and aunts and uncles who are always dropping by. And all that bustle, the kitchen was the command center, but also a sacred center. space, for the family to hold on to the flavors and rhythms of Africa, and for the aduba kids to feel a sense of belonging and confidence. Uso Aduba's mom had a special knack for making time slow down, and creating both food and family rituals that helped a little girl who grew up as an outsider become one of America's most celebrated actresses. All that, and Uso's family

recipe for Nigerian red stew. Be warned, it's red hot. That's coming up. I know that the kitchen is one of your favorite spaces because I follow you on all the socials. So we're going to talk about food. We're going to talk about memories. We're going to talk about your mother's influence because, you know, this is a show where that's always the first question. I want you to close your eyes. I want you to go back in space. And I want you to tell me about your mama's kitchen.

Describe it for me. What did it look like? What did it smell like? What kind of special things happen there? Absolutely. So my mother's kitchen is deep, rich brown cabin tree. It had wallpaper on it that was the harvest wallpaper. And had like corn, like a basket with like squash like we were getting ready to have a feast of some kind.

In one corner there was a kitchen table, small kitchen table, and there was a little TV in the corner. mom like to watch the news or Oprah while she was cooking. And when they bought it and we first lived there, all of the appliances were brown. The dishwasher was brown. The stove was brown. The fridge was brown. And then as each one of those things needed replacing, it turned to black. So our kitchen was brown and black. And the thing I remember most is my whole life growing up, I don't know who was responsible for it. The counters were linoleum, so they had like a little plastic in them. And I don't know what sibling, what parent, what aunt, what cousin did it. But someone had

set a hot pot on the counter. Maybe they thought it had cooled, but it hadn't and it burnt this brown perfect circle. That was on the counter my whole life. No one owned up to it, no one festa? I had no idea, but it was right next to the stove. And it always had the smell of spices, warmth, it was a gathering place over the window, over the sink. There was a hot plate that my mother had hung that she had gotten for Mother's Day one year that said number one mom. And that was our kitchen.

It's where we went for help, advice, conversation, stories, connection, sanctuary. Sanctuary. I like that. And this was in Medfield, Massachusetts. You had four siblings. There were five kids, two parents. So what was meal time like in that space that felt like sanctuary? Because it sounds like you were there not just for mealtime. You were there all the time in the kitchen. Yeah. Mealtime is an interesting thing because it started first. our bedrooms, I'll say. It started with orange juice first. My mother would wake us up every morning. My brothers and sisters with their kids sing the song as she would sing it to us. Every morning, I plan to sing it to my child when they're born. And, you know, my mom didn't have a lot. She worked a lot. She worked a ton. But every morning she would come in with a glass of orange shoes to our rooms and she would sing with this little Nigerian accent. She'd say,

for every sleep I wake, for the sun is in the sky. Come rise, come rise and hear the cuckoo cry. Cuckoo, cuckoo, wake up. It's bright. And she said, good morning, my darling. It's time for school. We have some orange juice. And then we go, get ready.

and then my brothers and sisters would start us in the morning for school for our breakfast time in the kitchen. And she'd be zipping around and she'd make one lunch for everybody. And then we would eventually be old enough to help and make our own. Okay, she's making your lunch. Did all five of you have the same lunch? And what was in the lunch box? Same lunch. Depends on the day.

If we're having an American lunch, maybe we're having some bologna and cheese, turkey and cheese, peanut butter and jelly. then soup became a big thing and we always wanted like a little thermos soup. Oh, you had thermoses. I remember that was such a cool thing when you had a little thermos in your lunchbox. Yeah, we didn't have a little thermos. We got like the industrial.

Don't get excited. Don't get excited. It wasn't, that's what we meant when we were saying it to her that we wanted to. And then she brought these massive like thermos, huge like we're going to work the mine's thermoses. And no, there was not a, there wasn't a Barbie to be found on it.

not a dinosaur anywhere in sight. It was like, great. And it was huge, more soup than you could ever consume as a child at that age. And like at the lunch table being so embarrassed, everybody's opening their cute little lunch boxes with their little thermos and like me hauling off the ground like this heavy. It's like, I have a thermos too, guys. And it's like, no, you don't.

It's the size of a fire extinguisher, you know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That thermos. And then being first-gen, then sometimes getting Nigerian food for lunch as well, which is delicious, by the way. And I know that it's delicious. I was one of those kids who, when I was really, really little, you know, elementary school age, primary school age, did not want to stand out. And you're pulling out of your lunch bag some rice and stew or my mind, which is delicious.

and people being like, what's that? I have no clue. They're not familiar with the fragrances. They're not familiar with the look of it. And then having to explain that, that was lunch. You know, I know you lost your mother not long ago. So thank you even for going down memory lane, you know, because I know that memories can be comforting,

but sometimes difficult too. I wonder if she was ahead of the curve, because a lot of us go to sleep to crickets and sound of the ocean or the mystic forest or the night truce. train through Ireland or whatever you're listening to and try to wake up in calm also. Was she ahead of her time and that she was trying to demonstrate how you can wake up in a calm space or maybe also tell you that whatever happens in the day on the outside world, I am demonstrating to you that you are special.

I think it's maybe more of the latter. It's carving out of time for each of her children to feel significant, regardless of of what obstacles they might meet out in the world. What I know I took from it as an adult is I knew no matter what, no matter how hectic, how busy, how much my mother had to do, she would always make time for me. I knew that because here she was stopping time, essentially, to do this for her kids.

And that made me know that for a fact that she was always, there for me will always be there for me. And number two, that despite all of what was going on outside of the world for her, it was important for her to make sure her children understood that they were significant, significant enough for time to be stopped. Is there something that happened or some things that happened in that kitchen that help you channel the characters that you so beautifully and evocatively portray on the screen? Do you go back to that space, that sanctuary sometimes, to find the headspace you need as an actor? Yeah. I mean, certainly there's a lot of personality in that kitchen, whether it's whoever was coming through that thresholds.

There's my mom, of course, but my aunts and my mother's friends are big, big personalities, all of different walks. And big can sometimes be quiet, by the way. there's a lesson to be learned in stillness with a lot of chatter going on in the room and seeing that that one person who is just quiet constantly and observing them and that stillness is amazing.

Yeah, absolutely. And my siblings and I in there, I remember we had this linoleum floor so it was slippery and we would put our socks on, my little brother and my little sister and I, and we would practice figure skating like we were still, you know,

because I used to figure skate, my brother played hockey, and we would be doing our jumps and all these twirls and stuff in that kitchen and really truly felt like we were on the rink, you know, a really tiny rink, doing all of these fun stuff. We would listen to sharp debate

happening with the TV, that TV would be going, and the news would be happening, and whatever story and headline is marked in my brain there. I remember on that kitchen television, it was winter, February 11th. I remember the day after my birthday, Nelson Mandela being released from prison in that kitchen, and it had snowed, I believe, that day. And we were outside, and my mom called us in, and she said, you have to stay inside.

And we were waiting, and we didn't know what we were waiting for, you know, because, you know, they're waiting for him to appear. And I remember he came out of, it was a little car on the street, he came out, he and Winnie Mandela, you know, and we're like, what is this? We're watching. And she said, a very important man is free today. And that happened in our kitchen, you know, watching that. And the impact and the importance of significant historical moments. Of course, I think those things definitely play into discovering character.

seeing people at rest, seeing people scramble, seeing people talk and work simultaneously, communion, all of those, absolutely, I think, help to inspire an approach. For me, a big part of acting is, okay, this is how I know it to be and done traditionally. What can I find else that might be interesting? And a lot of times it's the people I've encountered in my own life who add a little extra flavor to those characters. What did she call you? Zaza.

Zosa? Yeah. So we all have names, but she never called us our actual names. She had a nickname for each of her children, and mine is Zaza, instead of Ozo. So what is your full name? And why did your parents choose? that name? It's my full name is Oza Makka,

one necker, adba. You're putting in the hopes and the desires you want for that child. And it also is like a reflective story. Somebody who hears that name can hear what one has experienced. They can get a sense of the backstory. And for my mother, that name was significant because my mother loves 90 stories in her one lifetime. And she had been born in Nigeria.

She had overcome polio as a child. She had lived through the Biafran and Nigerian Civil War. She moved to the United States and became a widow at a really young age, 36, and remarried my dad. And the name Uzamaka means literally it means the road. is good. But the nuance to it is a little bit richer. And it means that it was worth it. The road was hard, but it was worth it. Was there a large Nigerian community in Medfield? And is that one of the reasons why the kitchen felt like a sanctuary to you? No, there is not a large, there's not a large Nigerian community there. There's not a large black community, community of any other races except

for whites. It's a very, very traditional New England. suburban white town. And I would say the kitchen was absolutely a sanctuary, in part because of that. A lot of lessons were taught and learned there in our kitchen. A lot of very important conversations were had there as far as how to operate in the world and to hold on to who you are in the world. Give me an example of that. I mean, when I wanted to change my name as young as that, you know, that happened in our kitchen in the first grade. Oh, no. Tell me about that. You came home and said, I want to be called Mary or Betty or Sally. Yeah, there was a time when my name was thought to be difficult to pronounce and really hard to say for some.

And, you know, sort of being made fun of because of my name. And, oh, this is too hard to say. And adults, sadly, saying, well, isn't there something easier? Can I just call you Zoe? And I had never considered it, but suddenly it didn't sound like such a bad idea. And I thought, well, that kind of sounds like Uzo. And it's funny because Uza Mak is the name. Uzo is a common nickname for the name. So in our kitchen, my mom was cooking and I came and I asked her.

I was like, Mommy, she's like, yes, my dear. And I said, can I ask you a question? And she's stirring whatever she was cooking at the time. And I said, can you? call me Zoe, and she stopped, like the world stopped, and just turned and looked at me, and she was like, why? And I said, because they say it's too hard to say Ozamaika, and without skipping a beat, she was just like, they can't want to say Chikovsky and Dostoyevsky and Michelangelo, and they can learn to say Ozomaca, and went right back to cooking. That was the beginning end of that conversation.

And at the time, I was like, what's a dos to you're just like? Like, I don't even know what that is, but okay, you know. And she really insisted that all of her children's names appear as she had given them on their roll call list. And later, you know, because I'm thirdborn, learning that she'd already, been asked something of this type by my older sister. So she was ready when each of us came. And she was essentially teaching all of us that there is nothing to be ashamed of. Where you are from, who you are, what you look like, how you identify, what you bring into this world is special.

It is yours and yours alone. And you have no. need for apology or explanation to anyone for it. And that insistence, I have no doubt, is what then, you know, when it came time for me to pick my formal stage name, it was just, it was not even an option in my mind to consider, to change it to Zoe, whatever, which is a beautiful name. It's just not my name. You know, those were the things. And, And she didn't want us to roll back or hide any part of ourselves. And I'm grateful for that. My gap, the same thing.

The gap in my teeth. The gap in my teeth. When I was really little, I had such a problem with it. I had a real problem with it because you get to middle school age, right? Everybody's getting braces now or retainers and all of this. But how I interpreted it when I saw it was that something is wrong with this. This needs fixing, right?

Correcting. And I would beg, beg, beg, beg. When I say beg, I mean beg my mother to get me braces. I said, please, please, please, I need braces. I need them. Look at my gap. It's so ugly.

Please, please, please. She said, you don't need braces. We go to the dentist, there's nothing wrong with your teeth. You don't need braces. She said, do you think, my older sister, who has a gap? Do you think she's ugly? I said, no, no, hers is pretty, but it's not for me. It doesn't look right on me.

It doesn't look right on me. And so one day she sat me down and she said, Uzo, you see this gap of yours. It's an yon-kou gap. My mother's maiden name is Anyaoku. She said, this is an yonogu gap. Everyone in my family has this gap. So many people, they have it.

I don't have it. And my whole life, I wish that I have gap and I don't have gap. And I don't have GAAP. She said, don't you know in Africa, Gap is a sign of beauty? And I said, we don't live in Africa. We live in Massachusetts. We live in Massachusetts. And she's like, you know, I'm not going to close this thing.

And I was so sad and disappointed about it. And she would say it all the time. She's like, Agap is a sign of beauty. In Nigeria, a gap is a sign of beauty. And I wouldn't smile. pictures a lot. I would kind of smile like with my mouth closed because I really didn't care for it. And my senior year of high school, the photographer, they brought in a different photographer to do like the special. You know, when you get your senior portrait picture taken for the

yearbook, it's not the regular with the lasers or the gel background. Now you've got like the tree. Or the fall leaves. Oh, the fall. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe you're in your your cap and gown even. you know, the special picture. That photographer came through. So we knew we were, this was serious business. And I sat for the picture and I'd be talking to the photographer. And he'd be making jokes in such in between shots.

And I'd be laughing and smiling. And then he'd pick the camera up. And I would close my mouth again and would just do this closed mouth smile. And suddenly he was like changing cards in the camera. And he's talking. And he said, why, how can you close your mouth like that? Every time I take a picture, I said, Oh, I don't know.

And he said, no, why? What? What's the reason? I said, I don't like my gap. And he said, for a second, he just thought to himself. He said, I think you have a beautiful smile. And I remember in my head being like, you do? Like, just like, wow, I didn't believe it.

And I didn't smile in that picture, but I remember the rest of the year I did. And moving forward I did. And, you know, I have a hard time sometimes not smiling on carpets because I always say I think I'm making up for lost smiles. And when I think back to it, so then when I moved to New York and I had met with this agency, and they really wanted to work with me and sign me there. And we were talking, you know, about the future and all of this. And then the agent said, so what are we going to do about that gap? Are we keeping it?

And, yeah, I was so blown away. And my mind, yes, went to that day with the photographer, which had an impact. But it went even further back to those days in the kitchen where my mom was telling me, don't you know you have Anjoku Gap? And don't you know that in Africa, Gap is a sign of beauty. And she wasn't saying that to lift me up and throw me something that wasn't so. she was telling me what lived inside of me came to me from those who came before me. And she really impacted me and helped me to understand that my beauty, though different from this place where we are now, mattered.

And I said to that agent, I said, yeah, we're keeping it. And it was the last time I ever thought about it. And just like your mother stirring that pot, that was the end of that discussion. We're keeping it. We're keeping it. We'll be right back after the break with Uzo Aduba. She talks about the secret to getting the heat into Nigerian food. Let's talk about the food that your mom prepared in her kitchen.

It's Tuesday, and she's got five kids to feed. And a spouse, what is she throwing on the table? Rice and something. Rice and something. Rice and chicken, rice and stew, rice and red, stew, rice and vegetable stew, rice and something. Rice, a lot of rice. Okay.

Rice. Are you a cook yourself? I absolutely love to cook. I got that for my mother. She insisted that we all learn to cook and to cook for ourselves. And she would make sure that we were there helping either chopping the vegetables or would you get older, really paying attention to how she makes this foo. So you understand how that gets done.

So you can, and then eventually learning how to make the rice and stew yourself or the Jula for the Igusi, so on and so forth. She really did that work of teaching. And so I absolutely love, love, love to cook and identify cooking with a lot of time spent with her. When she left us to go live in heaven, as I say, I didn't make Nigerian food until fall of 2022. That's two years. because so much of her was in that experience for me.

And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd order it on occasion. And even if I had a hankering for it, I just couldn't get myself to do it. And then this past fall, I was like, I think I want to try again. Because it's a process. It's really, there's real ritual in it.

because the ingredients aren't all sound at a Western market. What happened on the day where you decided I'm ready to do this? And I'm ready to have this taste but also embrace this memory. I think I realized that even though she was gone, I wasn't alone. And I certainly after it was prepared, I understood it's weird. it's like something almost about it felt like she was coming alive again in the making of it. The stories, the conversations, the memories. They're all brewing simultaneously as the food is bubbling and boiling and baking.

And this weird feeling that I guess I thought that I couldn't do this, do cook this, do maybe life in some ways without her. but really realizing that she's always going to be with me because she's in so many parts of me and who I am and in this dish. This is her. I'm not able to do this without her. That gave me some real peace. I was like, I'm ready to do this now, and I remember it was so,

I had told my husband, you know, I'm going to go, I'm going to make some Nigerian food. week for dinner, which he loves and hadn't asked once why that had stopped or he just sort of let me process. But I remember when I said it, his head whipped around. Like, he was real excited, like ready. He said, okay. And we sat down and we were eating it and, you know, he's chewing and he just said he was like, tastes really good, baby.

I was like, thank you. it almost feels even more sacred now. Does that make any sense? It does. Yeah. So when you need a taste of home, what does it taste like to you? What is a recipe that you want people to perhaps try in their own kitchens if they want to understand you and your family? I think it would definitely do a rice and red stew to start.

Okay, so let's break that down. First of all, what kind of rice? because rice is not all created equal. Correct. It is a white rice, I would say. A great jasmine is nice. It's longer grain. It fluffs nicely.

Do you do it with butter or chicken's not? Water, typically, and a little butter to fluff it a little. A little butter, okay. And talk to me about the red stew. Red stew is like a tomato sauce, but it is not as tangy as marinade. You cook the tomatoes down so that sweetness sort of cooks out of it. And it's a puree of tomatoes, onions, red bell peppers, Maggie Cube, which is Boolean Cube. And you use the stalk from some boiled meat in it.

Hot pepper. Can you use scotch bonnet pepper? And then we have, to be honest with you, I don't know what this pepper is comprised of, but anytime I go to Nigeria or somebody goes to Nigeria, I ask them to bring me back hot pepper. And you could sometimes find hot pepper also at the African-American. So when you say hot pepper, they know what you're talking about. Hot, just bring me some pepper.

So on a scale of one to ten, it is a nine-ten? A thousand. Oh, okay. When I say you don't need much, people, I mean you don't need much. Just a little bit, a little bit of hot pepper, meaning quite literally a spoonful for a potful. Okay. And do you have to be careful? Because the seeds are often the thing that hold the heat.

Yes. And you don't want to touch it. Even when you open the zippy of the hot pepper, you don't even want your face to be there because you'll sneeze. Oh, my goodness. It's nuclear. It's hot. You've been warned.

And some kind of protein. Yes, which you could do goat meat, if you like goat meat. And it's really tender and cook it down really deliciously. But you could put ox tail, chicken, if you take chicken legs and chicken thighs, a rump roast and cube it, really, something that has a little bit of marbling on it so that it adds to the flavor of the broth that will be cooked out of it. And you cook that separately, the meat separately with just about two Maggie cubes, bullion cubes. You cook the meat in and a beautiful flavor. You use some of that water from the stock in the roostoo. Yes.

And what you start is you start with cooking the tomatoes. You chopped them up, put them in the pot with some oil, and you let them fry those tomatoes about 20 minutes so that they cook out that tangy flavor I was mentioning. And as it's cooking down, they'll fall apart. And you can start stirring and they'll get like mashed up. And a blender, yes, that's it. And then in a blender, you're going to blend your...

red peppers, some of your red peppers, and some of your onions, and you're going to save about a quarter of that amount to the side. You pour your blended, pureed peppers and onions in with the tomatoes. You let that cook and connect for a minute. You pour some of your stock in. You put a little bit more oil in there, and you let it reduce. Once it has begun to reduce, not a complete reduction, then you're going to add your salt.

and your pepper, and you're going to let it reduce some more. You'll taste it at that point, and you'll determine if it's hot enough for you. And then at the end, you put the peppers and the onions that you reserved in, so it just adds another texture to the puree. You put your meat in, and then you cover it, you put it on low, low, as low a heat as you can get your stovetop to. So the burner that has the really low, low, low flame or the induction that goes down as low as it possibly can. Yes. And depending on how much time you have, you let it cook all the way, reduce all the way down from there. And if you really have time, it's best to make it the day before. Mm-hmm. Always.

Always. Because if you can leave it on that flame overnight, that low, covered, in the morning, it's perfect. So when you serve it then, because you're not serving it until the next night, do you add a little bit more stock or anything to it when it's already reduced if you need to stretch it or need to lift it up a little bit? You can, and I would only recommend that just for boiling purposes so that the bottom doesn't burn, but not too much. Really not too much. It's really just to cook it up for temperature. Okay. And then that evening it'll be so flavorful and red stew, excuse me, is best when accompanied with dodo or. plantain. You must have some plantain to fry with it. Okay. It's delicious. Yes. And that was my little brother's job, the pluring plantain. You have me wanting to run out of the studio and go right to my kitchen right now. I am very hungry after you're listening to this. Thank you so much for being

with us. Thank you very much for having me. This has just been delicious. Thanks so much. Now see, I told you from the start. Uzo Aduba is a great storyteller. I can almost picture her mother with all those kids pretending to ice skate in their socks and getting into all kinds of hijinks as her stew cooked on the stove. Time does beautiful things to flavor, which is why the foods we cook low and slow taste so rich. But flavors and rituals can also pull us backwards in time so that for a moment we can feel like the people or the places we've lost are right there with us. Uso was generous in describing her family's recipe for a Nigerian red stew with all that layered heat. You can find the recipe on my

Instagram page. That's Michelle underscore underscore Norris. That's two underscores. And with all inherited family recipes, there's often a little extra special touch. And if you have your own version of a red stew or your own secret must have

knock them out ingredient for Nigerian red stew, we want to hear about it. Remember the hashtag your mama's kitchen on your social media platforms. Thanks for listening. I'm Michelle Norris. Here's a roll call of the wonderful folks who cook up this show every single week. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original, produced by Higher Ground Studios,

senior producer Natalie Wren, producer Sonia Tund, and associate producer Angel Carreras, sound design and engineering from Andrew Eepin and Roy Baum. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camilla Thurtecuse, Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fehrman, and me, Michelle Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Zola Mashariki, Nick DiAngelo, and Anne Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by The Soul Rebels. Editorial and Web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media, marketing from inside projects. Our talent booker is Angela Paluso, and special thanks this week to Julia Murray with Higher Ground.

Head of Audible Studios, Zola Masheriki, Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza, and that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Come back next week. And until then, be bountiful. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording, copyright, 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.