Randall Park and Uzo Aduba have become fast friends!
In an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE, Park, 50, and Aduba, 44, opened up about the bond they formed while working together on Netflix’s latest murder mystery series, The Residence.
The Shondaland whodunit stars Aduba as Detective Cordelia Cupp, who launches an investigation after a dead body turns up in The White House. The series follows the search for a killer in a house of 132 rooms filled with 157 suspects after “a disastrous State dinner.”
Park, who stars as special FBI agent, Edwin Park, was “nervous” but “excited” to work alongside Aduba, knowing she was “one of the great actors of our time.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, I hope she’s not mean because she is Uzo.’ And immediately I felt like ‘This is the nicest, kindest, most grounded, just generous, nurturing, funny person,'” he recalled. “I’d say like immediately, right off the bat, I just love her.”
Aduba returned the sentiment and called her costar “a class act.”
“I knew his work beforehand,” she said, referencing Park’s roles in Always Be My Maybe and Fresh Off The Boat. “I knew the depth of his talent, or I knew the breadth of his work, I should say. And then through this experience, I got to experience just truly how deep and rich his work is.”
The Orange Is The New Black alum described Park as a “true joy” and an “upstanding human being.”
“Just who he is as a person,” she continued, noting his “unmovable” core values. “You understand why those good things come to them and it’s not by accident.”
When it comes to how the two were able to bond on set, Park said their connection was formed through “so much singing,” especially “TV theme songs.”
Aduba laughed and added that there was a lot of “really big dancing” on set.
“One thing about Uzo that I really connected with is, she’s very into nostalgia. So, we talked about a lot of things from back in the day,” Park continued. “Random things like the lighting fixtures at the old Pizza Huts. We had a whole like half a day on that.”
In addition to Aduba and Park, The Residence — which is based on a book with the same title by Kate Andersen Brower — also stars Giancarlo Esposito, Susan Kelechi Watson, Paul Fitzgerald, Dan Perrault, Spencer Garrett, Edwina Findley, Molly Griggs, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Al Mitchell, Bronson Pinchot, Julieth Restrepo, Mel Rodriguez, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Mary Wiseman.
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The Residence is available to stream on Netflix.
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