Uzo Aduba stepped out onto the ice. It was dusk in Prospect Park. The skating rink at the LeFrak Center was hosting an event called Monster Skate. Witches and bumblebees orbited to “The Addams Family” theme song. Aduba, who wore black (blazer, Valentino shades), took a few warmup strokes, her center of gravity low over rental skates. Then she pivoted and, in a fluid motion, spun around and began skating backward. “It’s like flying!” she said. She offered pointers to a wobbler: “You have to let go of the fear. Stand in your body. Own it. If you think you’re going to fall, you will.”
Her fellow-skaters tried not to stare. Aduba stars in “Orange Is the New Black,” the Netflix women’s-prison series, in which she plays an inmate known as Crazy Eyes—an oddball who wears her hair in Bantu knots and is known for quirks like “marking her territory.” She sings, too. This week, she’ll play Glinda the Good Witch on NBC’s “The Wiz Live!,” alongside Queen Latifah (“dying”) and Mary J. Blige (“hashtag get into it”). But before all this Aduba was a competitive figure skater. She skated for ten years, starting at the age of five. “There was a point I was skating every day of the week, minus Sunday,” she said, executing a neat crossover step. “I could do a triple Salchow, a double Axel, a triple flip. No triple loop—that was always my worst jump, that inside edge.”
Aduba grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, in one of the town’s few black families. “There were maybe four others.” Her mother, a social worker, and her father, a banker, emigrated from Nigeria after the Biafran civil war. They had five kids, and they wanted them to take advantage of America’s opportunities—which meant lots of lessons. “My sister took ballet,” Aduba said. “We all played instruments.” When she brought home a flyer for lessons at the Natick skating club, her mother signed her up. Speed, fresh air—“My spirit, my heart couldn’t get enough.” A younger brother joined her. “We were both addicted,” Aduba said. (He recently retired from the Missouri Mavericks, a minor-league hockey team.) “We were just a Nigerian family, out on the ice. My mom was, like, ‘Of all the things these children could be attracted to!’ ”
A man in a Lycra Ninja Turtle costume whipped past. Aduba focussed on his form: “See how free he feels? You can see the freedom inside his bones.”
Her skating career was a victim of its own success: when a coach lobbied for her to leave school to train, “my parents were, like, ‘That’s never happening.’ ” She switched to track and became a state-champion sprinter. Meanwhile, a choir teacher had figured out that she could sing, which led to youth chorus and a degree in voice performance at Boston University, where she discovered acting. When she was cast in “Orange,” in 2012, she’d been a working actor in New York for ten years, living in Astoria and “clearing eight hundred dollars a month,” despite roles on Broadway. The character of Crazy Eyes sparked something in her. “I came into my audition with the knots in my hair,” she said.
“Orange” has been praised for expanding the range of women’s roles on TV, and Aduba said that she is often approached by people thanking her “for creating a space for mental illness, for different sexual orientations, for gender issues, for women of color, for ageism, sizeism—all the things the show addresses.
“I know what it’s like to be other,” Aduba said. For years, she closed her mouth when she had her picture taken, to hide the gap in her front teeth. (She’d asked for braces, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. “She was, like, ‘Don’t you know that in Nigeria a gap is a sign of beauty and intelligence?’ ”) In high school, a yearbook photographer told her to smile more, and something clicked. “He said, ‘I think you have a beautiful smile.’ My mom had said it my whole life, but, for some reason, when he said it it rang in my ear differently. Now I smile all the time, even on red carpets, when you’re supposed to look fierce.”
It was getting late. Stepping off the ice, Aduba was approached by a security guard, who told her, “The supervisor wants to see you.” In the LeFrak Center office, a woman named Simone extended a hand and said, “I’m the rink manager.” She said that her wife had introduced her to “Orange Is the New Black.”
Another employee, Krystal, said, “My girlfriend and I just binge-watch.”
Simone laughed. “Can you get the gist? It’s a whole bunch of lesbians in here!”
Aduba posed for pictures, smiling broadly. “Thank you for watching!” she said, adding that she’d be back. “I’m going to buy some skates.” ♦
