Biografia

After having mostly unsuccessful auditions, Aduba got the call that she got the role of Crazy Eyes on "Orange is the New Black," 45 minutes after she decided to quit acting altogether.

In a 2014 interview with The Improper Bostonian magazine, Aduba said that growing up in New England, she often encountered people who couldn't pronounce her first name, Uzoamaka. "In grade school, because my last name started with an A, I was the first in roll call, and nobody ever knew how to pronounce it. So I went home and asked my mother if I could be called Zoe. I remember she was cooking, and in her Nigerian accent she said, 'Why?' I said, 'Nobody can pronounce it.' Without missing a beat, she said, 'If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka'".

Aduba told NPR interviewer Michel Martin that her full first name, Uzoamaka, means "the road is good" in her parents' country of origin, Nigeria.

She and Edward Asner are the only two people to win Emmys in both Drama and Comedy categories for playing the same character. Asner played the character of "Lou Grant" in Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) (Comedy) and in Lou Grant (1977) (Drama), while Aduba owes her Emmys in Comedy (2014) and Drama (2015) for her performance as "Crazy Eyes" to Orange Is the New Black (2013)'s switch from the Comedy to Drama competition (due to newly introduced Emmy rules in the 2014/2015 season).

She is only the 3rd performer ever to win Emmys for acting across all three genres: Comedy, Drama & Limited Series/TV Movie. The other two persons are Edward Asner and Cloris Leachman, respectively.

There's a myth out in the world that women can't work together. And I don't know if it's a chicken or an egg thing or what, but it's not true. I think it's an idea that is put out there maybe to divide and conquer. It something that I just have to write off as being a lie. If you bring good people together, regardless of gender, they're going to collaborate and support each other.

I love the excitement of being able to perform, and funnel that precociousness into a more positive form of, "Look at me, look at me!".

Never, ever quit on yourself if it's something you believe in.

I loved school, but I was very precocious. My second grade teacher would 100% agree that I had a very "strong personality". A distinctive dynamic and a strong personality. She was one of my favorite teachers - we still keep in touch now and have since the second grade. She saw that precociousness and didn't really try to change me or make me conform.

I am an optimist, without being a Pollyanna. I see the world for what it is, but at the same time I choose to believe in its possibilities. I just always think everything's going to work out. I don't know *how* it's going to work out, but it is. I've seen that time and time again in my life.