Courtesy of Zimbio

Kate McHale

Senior Staff Writer

@KateMcHale42

Could you imagine Orange is the New Black without Uzo Aduba playing Suzanne “Crazy Eyes?” Well that was almost a reality! In an interview with Today’s Tamron Hall, Uzo shared a bit of information on her acting career.

The day she got the role, one which she recieved an Emmy nod for, Aduba had decided to quit acting altogether, “The day — the very day — I got this job, I had quit acting about an hour beforehand.  I said, ‘Enough.’ I had been trying for (TV roles) and been hearing no. … It took a lot out of me.”

Aduba had actually auditioned for a different role on Netflix’s hit TV show, but after going weeks without getting word from the producers Uzo figured her chances of landing a role was slim, “I just started thinking to myself, You know, some of my family is from Nigeria. I don’t want to waste this dream. My mom worked really hard to come here.… And I just thought to myself, Should I go, y’know, my mom always wanted me to be a lawyer.”

Thank goodness she didn’t give up hope altogether or else Orange is the New Black just would not be the same, much like if Taylor Schilling had not been cast as Piper Chapman. The actors on the show now have made the characters so memorable and we can’t imagine the show without them.

However, when Uzo initially got the phone call she had been hoping for, she got the news that she didn’t get the role she auditioned for, but the role to be playing Crazy Eyes, “I was like, ‘Who? But now I know Suzanne.… I know her so well. And I don’t know; I can’t imagine it another way.” Neither can the viewers, to be frank we are so glad it worked out the way it did, because Uzo plays Suzanne perfectly!