One of the unsolved mysteries of Shondaland’s wildly popular Netflix White House whodunnit “The Residence” is whether Uzo Aduba’s unforgettable detective, Cordelia Cupp, is on the autism spectrum or neurodivergent aka neurospicy.
The answer would vary, depending upon who you ask. On Tudum, Uzo Aduba describes her character as a woman who is “strong, she doesn’t mince words and she’s unapologetically herself.” Finding the right costume for the character was an integral part of the storytelling. “Cordelia wasn’t going to look like [she’s a] part of this world that we’re all familiar with, Aduba says. “And it felt emblematic that she doesn’t fit into any world. She is a woman that is entirely her own — singular — and she is OK moving through the world in that way.”
Cordelia Cupp is More Than a Columbo or Monk
After the body of the White House’s head usher (Giancarlo Esposito) is discovered during a State Dinner with Austraila. The Chief of DC Metropolitan Police Department, who has jurisdiction, calls in Cupp (who has a global reputation for solving murders). She’s more like Hercule Poirot. While the men in high places play tug of war over who can overrule Cupp’s investigation, she ignores them. She gets down to business, putting intricate puzzle pieces together and introducing us to all the players while providing a healthy dose of references to birds and a side of birdwatching in the middle of the investigation.
Fans Have Laid Out Their Clues
Online audiences are talking because they see evidence, at the very least, of an autistic-coded character in Cordelia Cupp.
Here’s the Official Definition
According to DSM-5, to meet the Autism Spectrum Criteria, individuals would have persistent deficits in social communications and social interaction across multiple contexts.
- Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity range, for example, from an abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect and failure to initiate.
- Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.
- These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual development disorder (intellectual disability) or global developmental delay. Intellectual development disorder and autism spectrum disorder frequently co-occur.
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder may become fixated on certain topics and may also socially isolate themselves. In Cordelia Cupp’s case, her fixation with birds was a constant throughout the series. Then, it was combined with social isolation later in the series.
However, on the flip side, although she didn’t pick up on social cues, she did empathize with her friend, the Metropolitan Police Chief, and made a decision that helped him when he needed it most.
But here’s the thing: Cordelia Cupp knows she’s different. I will be very vague here for those who haven’t watched The Residence yet. Remember the conversation with her nephew in Episode 4, when they are birding, and he wants to give up?
“Do you ever think this is unhealthy?”
It is a word my mom uses when she talks about you.
“Single-minded. Difficult, Obsessive, Un..” he says.
“Uncompromising,’ Cordelia chimes in.
Then, she tells him the story about his mom’s strawberry socks. At the end of it, Cordelia says. “This is not the only way to be, but this is the way that I am.’
In the same episode, she gifts her nephew a birding book and talks about what she uses hers for.
“I like to sketch things I see. I learn a lot from drawing. I put down what I saw, where I looked, what questions I have.”
But Aduba also said birding speaks to Cupp’s patience. “Birding takes an incredible amount of patience. You have to wait, wait, wait for the moment to come to you rather than chase after birds.”
So, in this case, birding becomes a metaphor for how she methodically solves cases.
