Uzo Aduba plays Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren on Orange Is the New Black, portraying a character that is aggressive, tender, terrifying, and vulnerable. Her full name, Uzoamaka, means “the road is good,” but she was not always comfortable with it because few people in her Massachusetts town could pronounce it. She asked her mother to call her “Zoe,” but her mother insisted that others could learn to say her name. As a first-generation American, Aduba questioned whether continuing acting was honoring her family’s hopes after she was rejected from many roles. She even decided to quit after a difficult audition, then received a call that she had gotten Orange.
"I grew up in a very small town in Massachusetts, and it goes without saying that there weren't many Nigerian families in that town, and a lot of people couldn't say Uzoamaka. I came home from school one day, and I said to my mother ... 'Mommy, can you call me Zoe?' Aduba thought it was close enough to her real name but wouldn't make people tongue-tied."
"Without skipping a beat, she said, 'If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky, and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, then they can learn to say Uzoamaka.' And we never discussed it again. Aduba says that being a first-generation American made her think twice about continuing her acting career after she was rejected from a slew of roles."
"You know, they came here with the American dream. My mom, she really just wanted the best life for us, and I was wondering if I was just wasting that life. I'd gone to this audition for Blue Bloods, and I got lost, and I thought it was a sign that I wasn't supposed to be doing this. That day, she decided to quit acting."
"about an hour or so later, I got the phone call that I had gotten Orange. She is 100 percent and authentically herself, always, at all times, Uzo Aduba says of her Orange Is the New Black character, Crazy Eyes."
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