🎧 'The Residence' Finds Comedy in the White House. Really
Uzo Aduba lets me in on her Cordelia Cupp, the fast-talking sleuth trying to solve a murder at 1600 Pennsylvania
On Apple Podcasts, subscribe and listen here
It might feel like a strange time to try and get anyone to watch a comedy set in the White House. Not much of what comes out of Washington feels very funny these days, and there have been so many political TV shows since The West Wing that it’s a tall order to even find a new angle on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But Netflix’s The Residence is, I assure you, not like any other White House show — and its star, Uzo Aduba, knows exactly why. “ I thought it was a joyful honoring allegory of the people’s house,” she says of the series, created by Paul William Davies and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes. “No administration, no party is the master of this house.”
The Residence is mostly about the staff who serve the president and his family, from the waiters working in the formal dining room to the head butler (played by Giancarlo Esposito) who dies under mysterious circumstances during a state dinner. Boston-born Aduba, 44, plays Cordelia Cupp, the brilliant, eccentric detective — and serious birder — who arrives at the White House to crack the case, interviewing guests, the First Family and the many oddball employees there who are all now suspects.
Playing Cupp required Aduba not just to wrap her mind around the temperament and mindset for detective work, but also to change her entire manner of speaking. “She talks way faster than I do,” says Aduba, a three-time Emmy winner now playing her first lead role in a recurring series. “I’m kind of like a lollygag talker, and she is really snap, snap, snap, on to the next thing. So from a technical end I changed the pitch that I speak at, which is just slightly higher than hers. I had to sort of drop her voice down a little bit, mostly because I realized that in order for me, Uzo, to talk that fast, I kind of had to not move my mouth as much.”
Aduba describes the experience of making The Residence as a joy she’d be glad to repeat if it’s picked up for future seasons. But the show also faced a major challenge midway through production, when Andre Braugher, who had originally been cast as the head butler, suddenly passed away at age 61 in December of 2023. Aduba calls it “not an easy chapter, to say the least,” and credits Esposito for stepping into the role, both making it his own and being a “steward of the memory of Andre.”
Hear my full conversation with Aduba on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, which also includes a check-in with my Ankler colleague Lesley Goldberg about the current state of TV development and why The Pitt gives us both hope for what’s coming next.
