Adrienne C. Moore brings Black Cindy to life on the hit Netflix show, and Season 3 was her best yet. She talks to BuzzFeed News about tackling religion and body image issues (i.e., not having “TV titties”) through her character. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Adrienne C. Moore stars as Black Cindy in Orange Is the New Black.
Netflix
Black Cindy has a way of commanding a scene on Orange Is the New Black.
Sometimes her presence — brown-skinned, full-bodied, usually with a duo of striking Afro puffs — is enough to indicate something good is a-coming. Viewers of Netflix's hit series know immediately that they're in for a treat. Other times it's a simple 'hood anecdote, some twisted words of wisdom, or one of those quick "I wish a bitch would" moments that Adrienne C. Moore — the actor who brings this absorbing character to life — delivers so very well.
During the show's second season, Black Cindy's place became more prominent as her backstory was revealed: She'd worked as a security guard at an airport, stolen some personal property, and had an affinity for ganja — as well as a daughter who only knows her as an older sister. Cindy became more than just the background character who could always deliver a potent punch line. There was depth there.
But with the third season of Orange Is the New Black, which was released on Netflix earlier this month, the character gets even more fleshed out, and undergoes a spiritual awakening as she realizes that she's found her people, very surprisingly, in the Jewish faith.
Any assumptions that this conversion would simply be played for laughs are understandable. Instead, Black Cindy's Season 3 storyline actually takes a more serious route. Several inmates discover that Litchfield, the federal prison where the ladies are being held, allows its inhabitants the option of keeping kosher, serving them frozen meals that are much better than the slop being served to the rest of the women. Black Cindy and her comrades are happy: finally, food fit to eat. But when prison officials catch wind that the Jewish population has seemingly increased dramatically, they clamp down, bringing in a rabbi to sniff out the real Jews. A shift begins as we see Black Cindy take a razor-sharp interest in the religion, wanting to learn more about the foundation of the faith, much to the surprise of those around her. A big moment comes for the character when she sits down with a rabbi, and breaks down in tears while explaining why she is meant to be Jewish.
"The first couple of takes I did had a little bit of her humor to it. More serious, of course, but certainly that touch of humor. And then I literally had this flashback — and this is where it gets personal in my own life … And just this whole idea of even how I, Adrienne, having been raised with this idea of what Christ is and what the Christian church is, and someone with a strong Christian identity, and it took me to my college days when I began to realize my own self and had this 'aha' moment where I was like, so, wherever your faith is — and in this case for Black Cindy, it was Judaism — it is the act of doing it," Moore says of filming her intense scene with the rabbi. "That revelation just brought me to a very emotional place and to a very real place."
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