I first heard about Uzo Aduba through my sister. She has watched Orange Is the New Black almost a thousand times, and I’m sure she can quote a few lines in her sleep. Through her, I learnt of Aduba’s work, and I’ve followed her closely ever since, most recently falling for her performance in The Residence. So when she took the stage at CANEX WKND 2026 for a fireside chat, I knew I had to be there listening closely.
What was shared was a set of lessons, and here are FIVE that stayed with me.
1. What makes you different is what makes you.
Uzo grew up in the Northeast American suburbs in a purely Nigerian home: from the food, the culture, the dressing, to the language. The food is where it got awkward, especially at school. She recalls opening her lunchbox at school, filled with jollof rice, fufu, and her mother’s soup, while classmates constantly asked what it was. And like any child who wants to fit in, ‘everybody just wants to fit in’, she said, and at first she wasn’t sure how she was meant to.
Her mother wouldn’t budge. Even when young Uzo begged to close the gap in her teeth, her mother questioned whether she knew the gap was a symbol of beauty not only in Nigeria but in Africa too. The same went for her name, which her mother wouldn’t let her shorten just so it would be easier to say.
2. Embrace it first, and the industry’s opinion matters less
Years later, after she had accepted her gap and understood what it stood for, a manager asked whether she would close it. By then the answer was easy. Closing it, she said, “represented to me closing myself off from who I am.” She kept it, and she now smiles for the cameras on the red carpet. For years, she admitted, she didn’t smile much, because she wasn’t sure it would be accepted. “It really was about me accepting it.”
3. Let people see where the story began
Aduba traces her strength to the women in her family, her mother and aunts, who “lived in their power,” even if it was a quiet power. She realised in her last year of high school that the qualities people admired in her acting and her voice came from them. Diminishing her heritage, she said, meant diminishing them.
So for her graduation, where she was speaking, she asked her relatives to come in traditional dress. She wanted anyone looking at that crowd to “know where this story began.” Her mother’s eyes lit up.
4. Do the risky thing
Success arrived unexpectedly. When Orange Is the New Black was being made, Netflix wasn’t yet a household name, and Aduba told friends it might end up on YouTube. What drew her to the show was the writing and the rich, nuanced characters.
Her role as Suzanne, she said, taught her courage, and she applies that to business. Starting her own production company felt risky, and she did it anyway: “Do the risky thing.” Her process begins with a seed of a dream, put on paper, then taken to her team to turn into systems and operations. Underneath it all is belief. “I’ve never not believed something’s possible,” she said, adding that you have to bet on yourself.
She was just as practical about people. She hires those whose “why” is clear, and says she isn’t invested in “the flash.” What she wants is “a 50-year deal.” She also credited her husband, her mother-in-law and a team of about 25 people for their immense support, joking that her Google Calendar is very colourful. “I could not do this without my family.”
5. Remember the harvest
Asked by a young producer in the audience how to keep going through repeated rejection, Aduba’s answer was to “remember the harvest.” People focus on the reaping, she said, and forget the years of doubt that nobody saw. Even an overnight success then faces the harder question of whether they can do it again.
She also spoke about raising her daughter. Her own parents, she said, didn’t mind what career their children chose, but they did expect “a spirit of excellence,” including finishing a sports season once it had begun. She plans to carry that on.
A closing thought
Asked what she would tell her childhood self about success, and how to handle it when it inevitably comes, her answer was short and direct: “Enjoy it and thank God.”
It fits the spirit of CANEX WKND’s theme, One People, United in Culture, Creating for the World. Aduba’s message was that the culture you come from isn’t something to hide on the way up. It’s what you build on.
