The 40-year-old actress, whose career spans television, cinema and theater, got a Golden Globe nomination in 2015 and another one in 2016 for her supporting role as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. A few weeks ago, she received her third Golden Globe nomination, this time as Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama, for playing psychotherapist Dr. Brooke Taylor in the HBO series In Treatment.
Born in 1981 to Nigerian parents, Uzo grew up in the small town of Midfield, Massachusetts. She discovered her talent for singing at an early age and, after graduating from high school in 1999, became a classical music major at the Boston University School of Fine Arts. She studied classical voice and competed with the track and field team.
Work in theater promptly followed, with critically acclaimed performances. Aduba was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Play for The Olney Theater and the Kennedy Center production of Translations of Xhosa.
She made her Broadway debut in 2007 in Coram Boy, a work spotlighting the theme of child cruelty. In 2011 Aduba appeared in the musical revival of Godspell. She made her London debut in Jean Genet’s The Maids.
Currently, Aduba can be seen on Broadway in Clyde’s, from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage.
Curiously, her first-ever television audition only happened in 2012. By then she was ready to quit acting. Her Broadway show was closing and, besides, she had made plans to work with children in South Africa. Her first television appearance, in 2012, was in the role of a nurse in the CBS drama Blue Bloods.
In 2015 she appeared in the NBC live production of the Broadway musical The Wiz, featuring Queen Latifah and Mary J. Blige.
Aduba’s memorable work includes the portrayal of feminist Shirley Chisholm in the miniseries Mrs. America, opposite Cate Blanchett and Sarah Paulson. Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to the US Congress, the first Black candidate for a major party’s nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. In her interview with the HFPA, she said: “She believed in her own possibility, not in the limitations that others had for her. So, I just adore her.”
Currently, Aduba appears in the anthology series Solos playing a woman who spent 25 years locked in a high-tech home in order to protect herself from a global pandemic.
The actress made her film debut in 2015 in the musical dramedy Pearly Gates. The following year she starred alongside Jennifer Connelly in American Pastoral, directed by Ewan McGregor and based on the acclaimed Philip Roth novel.
These days Aduba may be seen in sports drama National Champions as an executive sent in when an elite college quarterback ignites a players’ strike right before the biggest game of the season.
Aduba has recently signed a producing deal with CBS Studios and will headline the drama series Low County. Her character is an openly gay deputy sheriff who takes on the wealthy white crime family that has kept everyone in the grip of fear.
In addition, Aduba is expected to begin production on Painkiller, a Netflix series focused on the opioid crisis. She will star opposite Matthew Broderick.
Aduba was also cast to work with Golden Globe nominee Lupita Nyong’o in the miniseries Americanah, based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s best-selling novel.
Her Instagram page, followed by 2.2 million people, states: “Growing up, I never thought there was a seat for me, so I’ve decided to build my own table. Come. Pull up a chair.”
She’s been highly noted for her advocacy: in April 2017, Aduba received the Point Courage Award from the Point Foundation, for her support shown to the LGBT community. In 2018 she became Heifer International’s first-ever celebrity ambassador to Africa. Recently she was revealed to be a minority investor in a new Los Angeles soccer outfit named Angel City FC. Earlier in December of 2021 her producing company, Meynon Media, released the live-action short Frimas, about a pregnant woman who turns to an illegal mobile abortion clinic in a country where the procedure is banned, with devastating consequences.