It's impossible to talk about Orange Is the New Black without talking about Uzo Aduba. As the scene-stealing inmate Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren, Aduba has endeared herself to Netflix viewers since the series premiered in 2013. Aduba later won two Emmys and two SAG Awards for her gripping performance, validating her childhood dream of becoming a successful actress. Ironically, had it not been for the dramedy, Aduba may have quit show business altogether. "There have been times in my life where I have doubted, questioned, felt tired, but I had never quit before in my core. My heart never quit," the 35-year-old actress says in the September issue of Essence, on newsstands Aug. 12. "And that was the first time I felt my heart give out on me."
Forty-five minutes after she quit, Aduba was cast in the ensemble series. "I lost my mind. I'm running around my apartment crying," she recalls. "I was like, 'You don't understand. I just quit.' And my agent quoted The Godfather line: 'Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.'"
Critics praised the show from the start, and word-of-mouth made it one of the most popular programs on Netflix. "People were thirsty, but they didn't even know what they were thirsty for until they saw our show," Aduba says of the show's diverse cast and rich storylines. "They wanted stories that felt inclusive of their existence, where they could see themselves...I never imagined a Bantu knot-wearing woman named Crazy Eyes would do all of this. Definitely not."
Breaking into show business wasn't easy, and many times, an up-and-coming Aduba was told she needed to change something about herself in order to meet certain expectations. To her credit, she ignored that advice and forged her own path to stardom.
"This business will try to convince you that you're not enough. That you're not pretty enough, thin enough, talented enough, interesting enough, experienced enough, and I say, 'Enough. Enough with that!' Who are you to tell me that I am not enough when I know that I am more than enough? I cannot subscribe to anyone else's idea of how I am meant to look, what size I am meant to be, whether I have a gap in my teeth, how I'm supposed to behave, what your idea of what my black womanhood is supposed to look like," Aduba tells Essence of staying true to herself. "No. This is me. I am just Uzo. I can't be anything other than that, and I don't want to be."