Emmy-winning actress Uzo Aduba will don a detective hat for The Residence, a Netflix murder-mystery drama from Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland.
Created by Paul William Davies and inspired by the book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by journalist Kate Andersen Brower, the upcoming, eight-episode series will have Aduba’s character investigating a crime at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“132 rooms. 157 suspects. One dead body. One wildly eccentric detective. One disastrous state dinner,” Netflix touts in a logline for the series. “The Residence is a screwball whodunnit set in the upstairs, downstairs, and backstairs of the White House, among the eclectic staff of the world’s most famous mansion.”
Per TVLine, Aduba will play Cordelia Cupp, a consulting detective for the Metropolitan Police Department and “an astute observer of human behavior, with a distinctive and — to some, unsettling — conversational style.”
Davies, a former Scandal writer who created the Shondaland legal drama For the People for ABC, will serve as showrunner and executive producer of The Residence as part of his multi-year overall deal with Netflix. Rhimes and her Shondaland producing partner Betsy Beers will also executive-produce the series.
Additionally, TVLine reports, director Liza Johnson (The Last of Us) will helm the filming of the first half of the season.
Of course, The Residence isn’t Aduba’s first Netflix rodeo: She won two Emmys for her role as Suzanne Warren in the Netflix comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black. Since then, Aduba won a third Emmy for playing real-life politician Shirley Chisholm in the FX on Hulu limited series Mrs. America, and she was nominated for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series trophy for her starring role in the fourth season of HBO’s In Treatment.
