Netflix’s new White House murder mystery, The Residence, stars Uzo Aduba as the eccentric Detective Cordelia Cupp. She’s tasked with solving a murder after a dead body is found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but with 157 suspects, Cordelia has her work cut out for her. Fans are curious to know more about Uzo and how she took on the role of the whodunit’s main character.
Who Is Uzo Aduba?
Uzo was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Medfield, a nearby town. She found her love for acting early on in her life and later attended Boston University, where she studied classical voice. Initially, she pursued a career in theater, and garnered recognition for her stage performances before she made the move into television and film.
What Has Uzo Aduba Been in Before ‘The Residence’?
Uzo’s acting career took off in 2013 when she landed the role of Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Orange Is the New Black, and her time in the series earned her multiple Emmy Awards. However, just before she was cast in OITNB, she considered giving up her pursuit of acting and considered going to law school instead.
“I got home that day and decided I was quitting,” Uzo said during a guest appearance on The Talk in October 2024. “I turned on Oprah’s Master Class and Lorne Michaels was on TV, the creator of SNL, and he was talking about starting the show and how it was panned and getting bad reviews. He said on screen, ‘I decided to keep the faith,’ and the words scrolled across the screen. He dissolved away and it looked, all of a sudden, like a Country Time Lemonade commercial.”
She explained that she liked Lorne’s words and made a note to herself to go back and post about it on social media, but it was then that her phone rang with the offer to join Orange Is the New Black.
Fans have also seen Uzo in Mrs. America, In Treatment and Painkiller.
Uzo Aduba Says Her Character in ‘The Residence’ Was ‘Daunting’
The Massachusetts native shines in The Residence as Cordelia, but Uzo admitted that taking on the role wasn’t necessarily easy.
“[Taking the role] was definitely daunting, but I think that’s what’s exciting at the same time. If you aren’t a bit scared of what’s being placed in front of you, then maybe you’re not doing the right part. And I was definitely figuring out how to tackle this because it’s a dense bit of material,” Uzo told Netflix in an interview ahead of the premiere on March 20, 2025. “Cordelia talks and thinks so fast, and I had to really work on thinking at that clip. It’s just so quick, how Cordelia thinks and puts pieces together, then moves them. She does not miss a beat, and I was drawn to that. I was drawn to the idea of keeping up with her pace and the pace of this world.”
She added, “I thought it was such a dense, but funny, piece of work. We’re talking about murder, a very serious subject, but it’s told with a lot of humor and a lot of levity, through a lot of different characters. This is subject matter that typically should not be laughed at, but has somehow found rich comedy. For an actor, for artists, we love things that aren’t doing the traditional, but are doing a little bit more of the unexpected. That’s exciting.”
All eight episodes of The Residence are currently streaming on Netflix.
