Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Uzo Aduba can do anything... except for the butterfly stroke

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

From a young age, Uzo Aduba's parents taught her that she could do anything. That confidence has led to some iconic performances – from Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren in "Orange Is the New Black," to Shirley Chisholm in "Mrs. America," to her lead role in the newest Shonda Rhimes production, "The Residence." Uzo talks to Rachel about how motherhood shaped her and why she's made peace with mortality.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined? Not particularly. Maybe the closest thing I can think of, but I don't even know if they necessarily think it's predestined, is motherhood. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card. The game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one.

And to flip one question back on me. I do believe heaven is closer than we think. I think it's right there, just out of reach. And they get to see everything that we're doing and they don't miss a birthday, a Christmas, a graduation, a birth. My guest this week is Uzo Aduba. And it made me think, well, maybe that's where the expression, best of both worlds, comes from.

Uzo Adduba very nearly wasn't an actor. She wasn't getting traction in auditions, so she convinced herself she should just give it all up and go to law school. The same exact day she made that decision, she came home to a message saying that she had landed the part of Suzanne on the hit show Orange is the New Black. Honestly, I'm pretty sure Uzo would have been a damn good lawyer. There's this sense of authority and competence under so many of her performances, whether playing Shirley Chisholm in Mrs. America or the therapist Brooke Taylor. in the show in treatment. Now, Uzo is working with Shonda Rhymes in her latest show The Residence,

where Uzo plays Detective Cordelia Cup, a woman who suffers zero fools in this Netflix, whodunit. Black Lady detectives are used to being the only one in a room, but Cordelia also has this other weight to bear because she is clearly the smartest person in every room that she's in. So she spends a lot of her time explaining things

to people who can't keep up. So yes, while a sliding door scenario might have taken Uzo Aduba in an entirely different professional direction. Once you've watched her inhabit one of these characters, it is impossible to imagine her doing anything else. Uzo Aduba, welcome to Wildcard. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thanks for having me.

Oh, I'm so pleased to get to talk to you and to do this with you. I think you're going to dig it. I'm here for this. Excited. All right, so round one, memories. Okay. First three cards. Okay, one, two, or three.

I'm a middle child, so let's go with two. Oh, are you? Yeah. Okay, interesting middle child. When you were bored as a kid, where would your imagination take you? Too far. Be more specific. I had a wild imagination.

I think as a parent now, God bless my parents. because I was like into everything. I would build tree houses and have no contractor background and be laying like planks of wood down. Oh, my gosh. There's one time I actually wrote my college essay on this. It's like extreme belief, like a confidence in belief in oneself that I'm willing to try anything. And it was we when, so my parents, when they bought our house, there was. the remains, you know, the frameworks, the bones of a treehouse behind in the backyard.

And it just had like, you know, a couple planks you could stand on. And some years later, now I'm a little kid, whatever, and I had seen the movie Swiss Family Robinson. Yes, that's right, you who did. And they have this elaborate treehouse in the woods wherever it takes place. And by the tree were these planks of wood. And so I decided that I wanted to renovate this tree house, you know, gut it, upscale it up. Yeah, exactly. And so I took my father's toolbox from the garage, nails.

I have no skill set in this. Like, I'm like... This is incredible. Eight, ten years old. I loop my sister, Chi-Chi into this. And I'm hammering down one plank and it's extending off. And I'm like, we built this extension. I'm like, this is great.

And I had this terrible idea. And I was like, Chi-Chi, go out to the end to see if it can bear our weight. And she was like, why me? And I was like, I'm going to sit on the end because if I go, I'm heavier than you, it could all fall over now. And all this work would have been lost. But if you go first, we can slowly be adding weight to see, you know, whatever. Clever. Horrible.

Horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible. She goes out to the end. I'm sitting on it. It holds her up. She turns around. She's like, it worked. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to sit up.

The second I started to, like, sit up, they come ripping out. Thankfully, she was okay. But those were the kind of hairbrained, half-baked ideas I was having as a kid. I would see something on TV and, like, be like rock climbing. I'm going to do that. And go get, like, bungee cords from, like, suitcases, you know, like back in the day. Yeah. and use those to climb a rock and then be, like, trapped there.

Sorry to sound like an old lady, but like, children, this is what we used to do when we didn't have screens. Yeah. That's right. That's right. That is so cool. Did you ever get in trouble for any of that stuff? Always. Oh, okay.

I was called my mom. She was like, oh, so. She was like real emphasis on the name when I was really getting into it. She's like, this imagination of yours, it is too much. It's too big, you know, just stop everything. You know, I had a wild, wild imagination. No dream is too big. That's pretty amazing that you had parents who made you think, even though, on the one hand,

your mom was like, don't kill yourself or others. Clearly, they were giving you some kind of foundation that made you think that you could do or dream anything. Definitely. I think it's absolutely true. Part of it was fueled by, you know, my parents are. immigrants from Nigeria and the first from both their families to come to America. So there was no community for them when they came. They built that for themselves, but they were the first to dare,

you know, and they were constantly beating the drum and filling my siblings and I up with the idea that we can do anything. And I foolishly or smartly believed them. I believed them. It worked out. It worked out. Let's just say that. Okay, three new cards.

Okay. One, two, or three. Let's go with, I don't know why I'm trying to apply strategy to this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Let's go. You'd be surprised at the number of people who actually do try to, like, project some kind of. I legitimately was like, well, if the flux, you carry the wand and the flux capacitor, like, you can, you know.

Let's go with three. Three. What's an experience from childhood that made you realize your parents were only human? Ooh. What's an experience from child? Like when I was a child that made me realize or later? Yeah. Well, it can be whenever.

If it's not coming to you in childhood. Like, when's the first time you looked at your parents as people, not just your parents, kind of thing? First time I looked at my parents as people. You know, my parents, like I said, you know, immigrants came here, working hard, five kids, very humble beginnings financially. Seven of us, and they lived in a three-bedroom house for a majority of my life, you know. And when I was really little, I think in the first, second grade to help supplement the household income, my mom worked at McDonald's. And I thought, and she was a social worker by trade, but she picked up a shift as a manager at a McDonald's. And I thought it was so cool because we got to go to McDonald's.

Right, you got free stuff. We had never gone. I thought it was so cool. so great, so amazing. I was like, this is awesome. You know, we get all the chicken nuggets we could ever ask for. It's amazing. You know? And then cut to when I was in high school, we needed some supplemental income again, and she was working at a Sears in the clothing section. And my mom, I remember who has a double master's, and working at Sears. And I thought, felt so self-conscious of it as a kid.

And I'm not proud of this at all. I remember I was just such a brat to her one day. I came in there because it was at the mall. And I was afraid somebody was going to see her because I thought she was above it, whatever that even means. And she was just tolerant is the best I can say of my poor behavior. Yeah. And I just remember realizing as a grown person, I guess, that whatever version in my mind of her that I thought she was as like this, you know, fierce academic who, you know, had a certain profession.

At the end of the day, she was just a mom who was doing whatever she needed to do to get by. Yeah. And that was, it shifted and grew. my respect for her in a way that I hadn't appreciated. And I wound up having to call her, you know. And she... How'd she respond? Oh, my gosh.

She was the grace that she always, gracious the woman that she always was. She's like, oh, also, don't you worry about that, you know. Just nothing to forgive. There was nothing to forgive. I want to pull back now, though, because I want to talk about the rhythm. residence. Yes. Which is such a delight.

It is such, such, such a delight. So this is a show you're working on, a show you made with Shonda Rhymes. It's on Netflix. Cordelia Cup is the name of your character. This is just like a completely fun murder mystery in the spirit sort of of a Knives-Out kind of ensemble cast. Explain to us who Cordelia Cup is because she, I don't know that I've seen a character like Cordelia on TV before. Cordelia Cup is a woman of her own cast or of our own type. She is quirky.

She's the world's greatest detective. She's the world's greatest detective. Listen, she didn't call herself that. That's what they say. Yeah. She's smart. She's persistent. She's insistent.

She's an incredible listener. Yeah. She doesn't miss a beat. Yeah. Oh, my God. Speaking of which, I was watching the pilot episode for this. And I was trying to, like, book my kid for his karate belt test at the same time. And I was like, wait, I can't actually multitask in this show.

Because it's like coming at you. It's like Aaron Sorkin dialogue. It's fast. It's furious. You're going to miss a plot point or some hilarious joke. That part. Yes, that part. It's the plot point and the joke.

Like it's tennis, you know, and it has that real ping pong back and forth. Rally, you know, volley, energy to it. And you have to, much like the game of tennis, be paying attention and quick on your feet at all times. Or you're going to miss a clue that is going to help you solve the case in the end. How did you decide? her voice. It feels like her range is very narrow. She's just operating right here at all times.

Yeah, that was the feeling. What I saw in the script was that she has a deck of cards in her hand. All of them are facing towards her. She does not turn the cards over and reveal anything to anyone, not even to the people she's meant to report to. You know, she holds that all very close to the vest. And because of that, and because of her keen ear for listening, she's catching every single word,

her voice to me started to become something that I wanted to mirror her visual blankness, just had to have nothing that it doesn't give away anything. And her voice to me felt one pitched slightly lower than my own and also felt slightly off the voice to not connect emotionally, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. So that she's just reading neutral. Neutral.

Just the facts name. Dispation and neutral. Just the fact around. You know, kind of a thing. and I was definitely later when... Because her voice is a little bit down here and she's talking very quickly and she doesn't move much of her mouth

when she's talking because she's just sort of getting to the end of the sentence and everything is driving towards the answer. And after the first day, I was like, is this going to work for six months? You know, is this going to... Lemon juice, hot tea.

Was this the right choice? You know, is this the... You know, but it felt right. It felt like, yes. Yes, everything should be neutralized. And she is not here to get caught up in the emotions of the people she's speaking to. Right. And she's not here to get caught up in the event that has occurred here.

She's just here to solve the case. I love the subversion of the stereotypes in this too, because it's the men spinning around her being hysterical and, like, acting hyper-emotional and irrational. And she's just clearly the smartest one in the room. And she's just batting them away like flies as she works through her process of solving this crime. Yes. The thing about her that I think is so great is she cannot be distracted. Yeah. She serves the job.

Her only focus, her only priority is to be in service to the case. case. That's her passion. That's her love. That's her drive. She can't be interrupted. Yeah. Well, it's such a fun ride this show. It's so many, many congratulations. It's so, so fun. Thanks. Thanks. Okay, we're going to get back into this game. You feel like you're ready for round two? Born ready. Yeah, totally. Let's do it. Okay, so round two. Round two. Oh, blue cards. Blue cards. Thank you for noticing. Insights is what this round is called. One, two, or three.

Let's go back to number one. Let's do it. Hmm. What's a quality you're drawn to, but you don't possess? Ooh. A quality I'm drawn to. This is going to sound so random, but the butterfly stroke. It's spinning.

I. Gymnastics. I love that that was the first thing that came. to your mind. I have awed kids. People do the butterfly in awe. Let's be honest. It's a crazy thing to do.

I too. I'm like, I don't understand how you're making your body go like that and you're going so fast at the same time. Yes, they look like they're flying in water or like actual dolphins. I wish I could do that. I can't do it. And I've tried. I don't have the stamina. I don't have the wingspan.

I don't have the ability to get out of the ones. water. It's just wild. And there was this girl growing up when I was a kid. Her name was Jennifer. I don't remember her last name who was on the swim team at the swim pond where we used to go. And I would just watch her. I just see her. And I thought it was just like magic. Like watching like Jordan on water or something do this butterfly. I wish I could do it. I can't. What was your stroke? What was your what's your? The back stroke. I did the back stroke. The back stroke. That's where it's at. Yeah, comfortable. Let's lounging. It's your. It's a good. It's a stroke. It's relaxing. It's a glorified luxury sport.

All right. Next three cards. One, two, or three. Okay, let's go with three. Hmm. I mean, I'm going to call them. What's something you've had to give up as you have grown up? Something I've had to give up as I've grown up. Donald's. Can I say it up on air? Come on. Come on. Come on.

I love it sometimes. This is like, McDonald's is going to be crazy. They're like, first she's praising us, she gets all that you can eat nuggets when she's a kid. And now she's sick. You don't eat it anymore? No, I know. Maybe fast food or, yeah. Junk food?

Junk food. Maybe we'll say junk food. I'm trying to live a more healthy life. I've limited it more. You've got a baby. I got a baby. And is that part of the calculation on just modeling good choices or just wanting to make sure you're around for as long as possible? It's that part. It's modeling good choices. And it's also, I've got a lot of milestones beyond my own life that I want to reach and see.

You know, I want to see some of those big moments and trying to pour into the bank, I guess, to try and do my very best to make sure that I get to see those. remarkable things that I have no doubt she's going to do. So, how old is she? Definitely. She's 16 months next week. Oh, she's a really is a baby. Yeah, exactly. So I have like, I got to pay into this.

Holy cow. Like, you're, I mean, you're still in, like, do you wake up in the night? Is she sleeping? I've been up since four this morning. Yeah. Because she woke up, woke up this morning. She woke up. Yeah.

You know, we're sleeping more. It's different than the newborn. phase, you know. Yeah. I don't know. My kids didn't sleep until they were three years old, each of them. Oh, really? Yes.

Oh, my gosh. Yes. No. Wow. You're a warrior. No. No. A real warrior would have let their baby cry it out and, like, rip the band-aid off

this thing, but I'm weak, and so I go into the baby every time that they were upset. We all do. Yeah. We all do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Next set.

One, two, or three. Let's do three again. What's something you feel has passed you by? Booty shorts? Let's see. What has passed me by? Something that has passed me by? Yeah, I don't know if I feel like anything has passed me by.

I very strongly believe that anything can come from tomorrow, and literally anything is possible. So I don't think I believe that. If I believed that as a mature woman, having a daughter, I wouldn't have done that. But having her solidified for me that there's still room for even the big dreams that feel like they might be coming up against the edge or the fringe. You know, I just... Parenthood for you was a dream. Yeah, I just don't know if I think... Yeah, I don't think anything has passed me by. And that, by the way when I say that, it's like mothering, you know?

It could have taken another shape, but it still wouldn't have been too late. Maybe if I, you know, adoption, surrogacy, it's never, like, that's what just makes me think. Yeah, I just don't think anything is, it's too late for anything. Last round. Beliefs. One, two, or three. I'm going to do, and by the way, just to have said it now, I'm very much enjoying this game. I'm so glad. I'm enjoying it.

Let's do one. One. Yes, please. Have you made peace with mortality? You yourself. For me? Yeah. I have in the sense that I'm not afraid of it in the same way that I once was.

And I say that from the very comfortable position of not being faced with it currently. Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. But something, because both my parents are gone now. Me too, yeah. Something that gives me strange comfort because I know people in the club. You know what I mean? It's like it's not scary to go because I'll see people I know there,

who I love and who I miss desperately. So that. gives me comfort. I guess the only thing about it, I'll echo something that my mom had said, you know, I asked her once, I said, Mommy, are you afraid of dying when she was ill? And she said, no, I just wish I had a little more time. Yep. Yeah. Isn't it always thus? And I think that's, I think it's that for me too. I don't want to die. I just, I want more time. Yeah. We're greedy. Yeah. Number three? Three. Lucky number three. Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined?

No. Is there anything in my life that has felt predestined? Is that a concept that you connect with? Not particularly. No. My life hasn't really gone that way. I mean, I've had angels is what I call them teachers or neighbors or parents who have at moments in my life guided me and have been the guardrails that have led me, say, into this business when it definitely wasn't something I pursued as an idea on my own. But I don't even know if I necessarily think that as predestined. Maybe the closest thing I can think of, but I don't even know if I necessarily think it's predestined, is motherhood. I did know for sure I always wanted to be a mother. I knew that. And when my

daughter was born, and that first night, not like immediately after she came up, but that first night, I remember feeling a completion of some kind that all of my life to that moment was now complete. Like, this was the final piece. And she'll be the one to go on record to say whether I'm a good mother or not. But one day, please. But when I'm with her, I just feel as though I was always supposed to do this. Yeah.

So I don't know if that falls under that 10 or not. No, we're going to keep it there. I wonder, though, if you think, oh, I should just say my experience. I also very much wanted to be a mom, a parent. And not so much in my 20s, but then my 30s came around. I was like, yeah. But my mom had died by the time I found my partner, my husband, and we had kids. And so I love my kids so much.

Wait, how many do you have? I have two kids, two boys. They're 12 and 10. But there's like a grief attached that my mom didn't meet them. Or even that she didn't get to know that that was a part of life that I was going to get to experience. And I wonder if you feel the same. Oh, absolutely, without question. I definitely know that feeling for sure.

Because this huge figure in my life, you know, my mom was my hero, full stop period. She's my favorite person in the world. I loved her, love her so much, you know. And so I was just so bummed out with number one. somebody who I was so connected with, we were just alike, my mom. She used to say, we're of the same rib. You and I are of the same rib. As Adam made Eve, I made you in my image, you know? And I was so bummed out that my favorite person wasn't going to be able to be part of it. But I have to say, and I don't know if this is true for you or if you had this experience, what I have learned in the time of being a mom is so much of her lives in me. Truly, truly does. And an example would be my mother, classic non-yem, I do a phrase saying as like a don't do that expression is with a finger wag saying, no, no, no, always three, and sing-songy like that. That's a classic ism of non-yms.

And one day, my daughter, I don't even know what she was doing. She was doing something, getting into something. And I do not say that phrase. But out of nowhere, I was like, Adiba, no, no, no. And I was like, who is that? Who's talking right now? And it dawned on me in that moment, oh, she's right here. Yeah. I am because of her.

And she is going to already be a part of the story. Yeah. Because she's in me. It's baked in. Yeah. And I do believe on my own side of the aisle, not to get so woo-woo, but... No, I love the woo.

I do believe heaven is closer than we think. And I think it's right there, just out of reach. And they get to see all those, be with all those who went before them, who they loved all day, and they get to experience watching everything that we're doing and they don't miss a birthday, a Christmas, a graduation. a christening, a holiday, a birth. They see all of it. And it made me think, well, maybe that's where the expression

best of both worlds comes from. They get to be in both places at once. And we're over here crying that they're gone. And then when we go and move to heaven, it's like, I didn't miss a thing. You know, my mom's going to be over there. I was like, I saw it all, my dear. I saw everything.

And you were over there crying for nothing, you know? So we end the day. the show the same way every time. And that is with a trip in our memory time machine. Okay. Here we go. You choose one moment from your past. It is not a moment that you would change anything about.

It is just a moment you would like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose? It's just a moment I'd like to linger in a little longer. a little longer. I think it will have to be the... I'm just going to go with the first thing that came into my mind. Senior Portrait Day in high school.

Not usually a thing that people want to relive. I'm already intrigued. Yes, this was a turning point for me. And these were the fancy school pictures because it was the senior year picture, you know? So kind of like a photo shoot. And he's taking my picture. I'm laughing and being myself and chill easy.

And as soon as he would take his camera up to take my picture, I would stop laughing, wide mouth, and start smiling like this. Mouth shut. Yep. Mouth shut. And he said to me, you know, why do you keep smiling like that? And I said, I don't know. And he said, no, why?

What's it about? And I said, I don't like my guess. gap because I was very self-conscious of my gap at that time. I wanted braces so bad. The gap in your teeth, yeah. And I just remember he had his camera in his hand, and he just said, like, I think you have a beautiful smile. And my mom had been saying that to me, my whole life, my family, everybody, and I never believed it. But that day, for some reason, I believed him for the first time.

He was the first person I ever believed. And it stuck with me. I don't know who that guy is. What a gift. But I own a lot. Yeah. And it just changed in my head. Like, it didn't matter what the outside thinks.

It's what do I think. And so now I smile all the time and I always say I think it's because I'm making up for lost smiles. And my mother actually used to hate that story because she's like, I used to tell you, I told you all the time you had a beautiful smile. Now this random amount. Because I was like, now you believe him. You know, she hated it. So I was like, this ridiculous story my daughter's telling. No, we can hear the same message for years and years and years.

And sometimes you just have to be open in a different time and place and a different person has to tell you the information. Correct, correct. And it sinks into you. Correct. But that has lived in my DNA forever. And if I could even go and revisit that moment and appreciate it then, I wish I could. So I could smile on that day, on that picture day. But it stayed with me.

I think you have a beautiful smile. You can see Uzo right now in the show The Residence. Uzo Oduba. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for having me. If you want more with Uzo, check out this week's Wild Card Plus, where she talks about staying real.

Whether that's my gap, whether it's my full lips, whether that's my broad nose, whether that's my body, whether that's my name, whether that's the way I move through the world. You can hear that answer by signing up for Wildcard Plus, which is an excellent way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen sponsor-free. Find out more at plus.npr.org slash Wildcard. This episode was produced by Chris Benderev and edited by Ramele Wood. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Our supervising editor is Dave Blanchard.

Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni. Our theme music is by Ram Thu. You can reach out to us at Wildcard. at npr.org. We love it when you do. We will shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.