Uzo Aduba got advice from Olivia Pope herself for her Shondaland White House murder mystery “The Residence”

Paul William Davies was watching, of all things, archived C-SPAN testimony when inspiration struck.

In it, the White House chief usher and other residence staff appeared before a Senate committee as part of an investigation into former president Bill Clinton circa the 1990s.“It was really mundane stuff for the most part,” Davies recalls to Entertainment Weekly. “They were testifying about how various boxes might have been moved around on the third floor of the White House. But as they were describing all of these different rooms and staircases and passageways, I just had this epiphany: This house! It’s like a Clue board!”

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Davies, a television writer and Shonda Rhimes collaborator who worked on Scandal and For the People, was in the early stages of creating what would become The Residence when it hit: “Make this a murder mystery!”

Premiering March 20, the Netflix screwball whodunnit — also executive produced by Rhimes — centers on a fictional murder in the White House. When a dead body is discovered during a state dinner with Australian dignitaries, eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp (played by Emmy winner Uzo Aduba) is called to investigate. With 132 rooms and 157 suspects, Cordelia leaves no stone unturned, exploring the most famous mansion in Washington, D.C. and shining a light on the eclectic staff.

Loosely based on Kate Andersen Brower’s historical biography of the same name, it marks Davies’ second White House-set Shondaland production post-Scandal, a drama about political fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington). But don’t expect it to be anything like Scandal. “It’s a very different part of the White House,” says the showrunner and executive producer. “We’re never in the Oval Office or West Wing. It’s just not part of the show. The tone and look and feel of it, it’s very much its own thing; not just compared to Scandal, compared to anything set in the White House.”

It would be remiss of EW, though, to not mention Olivia Pope when connecting with Aduba, a noted Scandal fan. Has she spoken with Washington at all to swap tales about the inner workings of Shondaland? “We did chat about it,” says Aduba. “Actors understand what it is to come into the gig and do the work, and she was so generous. She [talked about] treating it like a sport, going into it and pacing yourself and keeping your energy and being committed. She's a committed creative, which I love and respect. That's the environment that gets created on Shondaland sets as well, to be disciplined and pour yourself into it.”

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Aduba was “blown away” when she received the script. “It wasn't someone I played before, and it felt so thrilling,” she says. “I had to say yes just so I could find out who did it.” A worthy addition to the fictional detective canon, Cordelia is a sharp observer. She's off-centered, in the best way. An avid birder too, often disappearing behind the lens of her binoculars. “She looks at cases from that point of view, taking in everything from a bird's eye,” observes Aduba, who even took up birding for the role. “It’s very relaxing. It's an activity that requires patience. You're listening to everything and seeing things that you wouldn't have given any attention to.”

Aduba calls Cordelia “so entirely herself,” adding, “She doesn’t get intimidated by the room. That's a pretty big room to step into, the White House. Despite being in that space, she knows her stuff and who she is in the world.” The character, notes Davies, just sort of created herself. “I didn’t set out to create a classic detective,” he says. “When I started thinking about how the murder mystery would work, I thought the detective would be an important but almost peripheral character; that we’d really tell this whole story through the White House staff. But the more I thought about Cordelia and started to write Cordelia, the more Cordelia became Cordelia.”

The killer cast also includes Susan Kelechi Watson, Al Franken, Jason Lee, Randall Park, and Giancarlo Esposito, the latter taking over the role of chief usher A.B. Wynter from the late Andre Braugher. Braugher filmed four episodes before the dual Hollywood strikes paused production in 2023, and died in December of that year from lung cancer. 

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“I told him when we first met that I used to watch Homicide: Life on the Street at an extremely inappropriate age,” recalls Aduba of the “loving, remarkable” star. “He had such a depth of range and brought warmth, professionalism, and knowledge to set every day.” Davies also remembers Braugher’s warmth and intelligence: “The first time he came to the studio, we sat down for a few hours and talked about his character,” he recalls. “I had been working on this for three years at that point, had thought this all through at a molecular level, and within five minutes he had me confronting things I had never really thought about, or only inadequately. It wasn’t in a ‘gotcha’ spirit. He really wanted to understand who this person was, what I wanted him to be. He was so unbelievably smart and thoughtful.”

Though his scenes were reshot, Braugher’s spirit lives on through the show. And to that point, Davies promises a satisfying one. “There are a lot of suspects and clues, and the careful viewer will be rewarded by paying attention to these things,” he says of what unfolds. “As you get deeper into the episodes, you start to learn more about folks that you might have only thought were minor figures at the start. It just gets richer and more fun.” Your jaws will be “on the ground,” adds Aduba. “It’s not what you expect.”

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