For Uzo Aduba, there’s no such thing as ‘too late’

A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Uzo Aduba very nearly wasn’t an actor. She wasn’t getting traction in auditions so she convinced herself that she should give it all up and go to law school. The same exact day she made this decision, she came home to a message saying she landed the part of Suzanne on the hit show Orange Is the New Black.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure Uzo Aduba would have been a damn good lawyer. There’s a sense of authority and competence under so many of her performances. Whether playing Shirley Chisholm in Mrs. America or therapist Brooke Taylor in the show In Treatment. Now she’s working with Shonda Rhimes in her latest show, The Residence, where she plays detective Cordelia Cupp — a woman who suffers ZERO fools in this Netflix whodunnit.

Black lady detectives are used to being “the only one” in a room. But Cordelia also has this other weight to bear because she’s clearly the smartest person in every room 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 doors scenario might have taken Uzo Aduba in an entirely different professional direction, once you have watched her inhabit one of these characters, it is impossible to imagine her doing anything else.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: What’s an experience from childhood that made you realize your parents were only human?

Uzo Aduba: My parents were immigrants who came here, worked hard and had five kids. They had very humble beginnings financially — there were seven of us and we lived in a three-bedroom house for the majority of my life. When I was really little, to help supplement the household income, my mom, who was a social worker by trade, 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. I was like, “This is awesome. We get all the chicken nuggets we could ever ask for. This is amazing.”

And then cut to when I was in high school. She stopped working at McDonald’s at the time, but once again, we needed some supplemental income, so she started working at Sears in the clothing section. My mom, who has a double master’s, working at Sears. And I felt so self-conscious about it. I’m not proud of this at all, but I remember I was just such a brat to her one day.

I was at the mall, and I was afraid somebody was going to see her because I thought she was above it, whatever that even meant. And she was just tolerant of me and my piss-poor behavior. I just remember realizing as a grown person, that whatever version in my mind I had of her, that I thought she was this fierce academic — at the end of the day, she was just a mom who was doing whatever she needed to do to get by.

It shifted and grew my respect for her in a way that I hadn’t appreciated. And I wound up having to call her about it. And oh my gosh, she was the gracious woman that she always was.

She was like, “Oh, don’t you worry about that.” There was nothing to forgive.

Question 2: Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined?

Aduba: Not particularly, no. My life hasn’t really gone that way. I’ve had angels — teachers or neighbors or parents who have, at moments in my life, guided me or have been the guardrails or the pathways that have led me 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 is predestined. The closest thing that I can think of is motherhood. I did know for sure that I always wanted to be a mother. And when my daughter was born, 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 when I’m with her, I just feel as though I was always supposed to do this.

Rachel Martin: I also very much wanted to be a mom, a parent, but my mom had died by the time I found my husband and we had kids. And so I love my kids so much, but there’s 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.

Aduba: Oh, absolutely, without question, I definitely know that feeling for sure. Because she was 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.

We were just alike, my mom and I. 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, what I have learned in the short time of being a mom, is that so much of her lives in me. It truly, truly does. And an example would be how I developed a classic phrase of hers, saying something like a “don’t do that” expression with a finger wag saying, “no, no, no,” always in threes and sing-songy, just like that.

That’s a classic-ism of Nonyem Aduba. And one day, my daughter was getting into something, and out of nowhere, I was like, “Adaiba, no, no, no.” And I was like, “Who is that? Who’s talking right now?” And it dawned on me at that moment, “Oh, she’s right here.” I am because of her. And she is going to already be a part of the story. Because she’s in me. It’s baked in. And I do believe, not to get so woo-woo …

Martin: No, I love the woo.

Aduba: 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 of it. All those who went before them, they get to experience watching everything that we’re doing. 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.” My mom’s going to be over there like, “I saw it all, my dear. I saw everything. And you were over there crying for nothing.”

Question 3: Have you made peace with mortality?

Aduba: 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. Because both my parents are gone now — that gives me strange comfort, because I know people in that club. It’s not scary to go because I’ll see people I know there, who I love and who I miss desperately.

I guess the only thing about it, I’ll echo something that my mom had said. I asked her once when she was ill, “Mommy, are you afraid of dying?” And she said, “No, I just wish I had a little more time.” Isn’t it always thus? And I think it’s that for me too. I don’t want to die. I just want more time.