‘Mrs. America’s’ Uzo Aduba on the moment she saw Shirley Chisholm ‘without her wig’
In the latest episode of The Times’ TV podcast “Can’t Stop Watching,†host and staff writer Yvonne Villarreal asks “Orange Is the New Black†veteran Uzo Aduba about the research she did to play Black congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm in “Mrs. Americaâ€:
Why are we tuning in to watch this? We could watch a bunch of YouTube clips about her and see it told there. But the thing I really hooked into was, if you’ve watched [the documentary “Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossedâ€], it’s the last maybe 10 minutes of the film, when she’s releasing her delegates, and you see her collapse into her hands and she starts crying. And it is the polar opposite — that and a dancing clip of her — of anything — interview, speech, whatever — I had ever seen of hers. I had never seen, I realized, the woman who goes home after having had to confront the world all day as “the only.†... I’d never seen her, the woman, without her wig on. I’d never seen Shirley Chisholm until that moment.
Listen to the full episode to meet Aduba’s first dog, Mr. Fenway Bark, hear the actress discuss her journaling and viewing habits in self-isolation and what it meant to find another project led by women in front of and behind the camera after “Orange Is the New Black.†Plus, catch our recent episodes with “Watchmen’s†Tim Blake Nelson, “This Is Us†star Mandy Moore and more of your TV faves.
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