Three-time Emmy winning actor Uzo Aduba will be adding some new hardware to her collection this February: She is set to be The Hollywood Reporter‘s next Trailblazer Award recipient at a special event taking place on Feb. 6 as part of SCADTVfest’s official 2025 programming.
The ceremony will feature a presentation highlighting Aduba’s career given by THR contributing editor Stacey Wilson Hunt. Aduba will also join talent from her upcoming Shondaland-Netflix series The Residence — centering on a White House murder mystery — for a special screening and panel.
Related Stories
SCADTVfest, the signature event of Savannah College of Art and Design celebrating television, is now in its 13th year and will be held in Atlanta at the state-of-the-art SCADshow theater.
Other honorees will include Hiroyuki Sanada (Shogun) with the Lifetime Achievement Award; Laverne Cox (Clean Slate) with the Impact Award; Noah Centineo (The Recruit) with Distinguished Performance Award; Sophie Skelton (Outlander) with the Lumiere Award; Walker Scobell (Percy Jackson and The Olympians) with the Rising Star Award; and St. Denis Medical with the Breakthrough Cast Award, with cast members Allison Tolman and Kahyun Kim and creators and executive producers Eric Ledgin and Justin Spitzer attending. They join previously announced honorees the Duffer Brothers, creators of Stranger Things, who will receive the Variety Showrunner Award, presented by Caleb McLaughlin. Stranger Things also will be featured as the opening night gala screening.
In addition, the SCADTVfest will showcase programs from Adult Swim, Apple TV+, BET, CBS/CBS Studios, Disney Branded Television, Hallmark, HBO, Hulu, Max, National Geographic, NBC, Netflix, Peacock, Prime Video, Showtime, Sony Pictures Television, STARZ, Universal Studio Group, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Bros. Television and more. Notable guests and shows scheduled to appear at this year’s festival include the stars and creatives behind The Amazing Race, Beyond the Gates, Cobra Kai, Doc, Found, Grosse Pointe Garden Society, Home Is Where the Heart Is, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Agatha All Along, The Recruit, The Residence, Sistas, Surface, Watson and more.
Select panels include:
- “Behind Her Lens: Showrunners,” featuring Katie O’Brien (The Z Suite), Katie Robbins (Good American Family), Janine Sherman Barrois (The Big Cigar), Veronica West (Surface), Debby Wolfe (Lopez vs. Lopez)”
- “Artisans: Designing the Details that Define TV,” with Janie Bryant, costume designer (costume designer, 1923) and Bernadette Croft (costume designer, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)
- “Inside the Writers Room,” featuring Jeff Greenberg (Modern Family), Fola Goke-Pariola (Paper Girls) and Aaron Karo (Man of the Year)
- “Meet the Executives,” with Vivian Cannon (executive vp drama development, Universal Television), Hilarie Holt-Burnett (vp current programming, Sony Pictures Television), Lily Parrish-Kruger (director of current programming, Sony Pictures Television) and David Stefanou (head of Hallmark Unscripted Programming)
- “Disney Branded Television: Storytelling from Preschool to Families,” featuring Chrystin Garland (SCAD alum and art director, Disney Jr.’s Ariel), Rob Letterman (co-creator and executive producer, Goosebumps: The Vanishing), Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh (co-creator and executive producer, Phineas and Ferb) and Gino Guzzardo (vp multiplatform content, TV animation, Disney Branded Television)
- “Women of Warner: Leading the Charge in Television and Animation,” with Ashley Cole (senior vp drama development, WBTV Scripted), Shannon Howard (senior vp comedy development, WBTV Scripted), Susan Ochoa (senior vp current programming, WBTV Scripted), Stacey Kim (vp kids and family series, WB Animation) and Katie Petrachonis (vip adult series, WB Animation)
THR’s Trailblazer Award series launched in 2023 with a mission to acknowledge Hollywood artists whose work has shown a commitment to amplifying characters, stories and communities that previously existed in the margins of storytelling. Recent winners have included Niecy Nash, Eva Longoria, Matt Bomer, Jean Smart, David Oyelowo and America Ferrera.
Aduba’s post-Orange Is the New Black work has included a slew of groundbreaking roles, including playing the real-life trailblazing politician Shirley Chisholm in Hulu’s Mrs. America, for which she earned Critics Choice and Emmy nominations; and as Brooke Taylor, the complex therapist at the center of HBO’s 2021 reboot of In Treatment, which earned Aduba both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
In 2024, she released the best-selling memoir The Road Is Good: How a Mother’s Strength Became a Daughter’s Purpose. The book (whose title doubles as the translation of Aduba’s first name in the native language Igbo) recounts the author’s experiences growing up in Massachusetts as a first-generation Nigerian American, while also serving as an ode to her late mother, who died from pancreatic cancer in November 2020.
Outside of writing and acting, Aduba also is a busy philanthropist, serving as Heifer International’s first-ever celebrity ambassador to Africa. The 70-year-old organization provides, among other services, livestock and agricultural training to local farmers in order to create more sustainable food sources and incomes.
Passes and individual tickets are on sale now at scadtvfest.com.
