AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from the Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Uzo Aduba landed her breakthrough role the day she quit acting. She had decided to go to law school when she found out that she got the part of Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren on the hit show, "Orange Is The New Black." Now, over a decade later, Uzo Aduba is taking on the lead role in the latest Shonda Rhimes production, "The Residence," on Netflix. Cordelia Cupp is a detective who has been called in to solve a murder in the White House.
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UZO ADUBA: She's the world's greatest detective. She's smart. She's persistent. She's insistent. She's an incredible listener. She doesn't miss a beat.
CHANG: Aduba shares her character's confidence, something that she says her parents instilled in her. She talked with Wild Card host Rachel Martin about her relationship with her mom.
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RACHEL MARTIN: What's an experience from childhood that made you realize your parents were only human?
ADUBA: You know, my parents, immigrants came here, working hard, five kids, very humble beginnings financially, seven of us, and we 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 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 'cause we got to go to McDonald's...
MARTIN: Right...
ADUBA: ...Which we never do.
MARTIN: ...You got free stuff, hopefully.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Yeah. Exactly. We'd never gone. I thought it was so cool. And 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, who has a double master's, working at Sears, and I 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 'cause it was at the mall, and I was afraid somebody was going to see her 'cause I thought she was above it, whatever that even means.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ADUBA: And she was just tolerant, is the best I can say, of my poor behavior.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ADUBA: 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.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ADUBA: And I wound up having to call her, you know? And she...
MARTIN: How'd she respond? Yeah.
ADUBA: Oh, my gosh. She was gracious, the woman that she always was. She's like, oh, Uzo, don't you worry about that, you know? Just nothing to forgive - there was nothing to forgive.
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CHANG: You can see Uzo Aduba in the next Netflix series, "The Residence," and you can hear more of that conversation on the Wild Card podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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