A look into how the real characters in 'Orange Is the New Black' vary from their TV counterparts.
Although Orange Is the New Black is loosely in keeping with Piper Kerman's memoir about her Thirteen months behind bars, other people don't expect it to be utterly dependable to the book now that it is getting into its 6th season.
After all, we now have had murders, spoil outs, and jail riots since the modest first season aired, and many real inmates have criticized the show for being an faulty depiction of the jail experience.
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However, Piper actually did serve Thirteen months at the back of bars, and met a colorful collection of ladies who would inspire the characters on the show during her time there. But, after all, since this is a Netflix TV show, and every episode must be binge-able, the characters become very other from their real-world counterparts.
Here's a have a look at every OITNB persona and the way they fluctuate from their depiction in the book. (Warning: spoilers!)
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Piper
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Piper Chapman, the main persona on the show, is very similar to the real Piper in a lot of ways. She did move to jail, smuggle drug cash for her female friend when she was once 22, and befriend a forged of diverse female inmates whilst locked up at the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution. However, the real Piper wasn't slightly as naive as her TV counterpart.
The real Piper didn't own an indulgent soap-making industry, nor did she ever get furlough or thrown into solitary confinement. In truth, Piper's 13 months in jail were strangely drama-free. But everyone knows that doesn't make for excellent TV, so the writers took a ton of artistic liberties with her character. No surprises there.
Alex
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Piper's ex-girlfriend used to be called "Nora" in the book, but her real title is Cleary Wolters. It's true that she was a part of a global drug smuggling gang, however she and Piper had been never in jail together at the identical time. Instead, they brushed paths in brief all the way through a five-week keep at a Chicago detention heart, however that used to be it. And no, there used to be no prison romance.
"We did not have sex in prison,” Cleary told Vanity Fair back in 2014. “Not even a little bit.”
Cleary also said that she and Piper weren't girlfriends, although Piper strongly denied this.
“We were friends with benefits," Cleary mentioned. "I was not the older sexy, glamorous lesbian who snatched her from her pristine Smith College cradle.”
Cleary finally had a chance to tell her side of the story when she released her memoir, Out of Orange, in 2016.
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Larry
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On the show, Larry, Piper's fiancé, is a whiny, insecure cheater. Fortunately, the real Larry is completely different (and definitely not a loser).
In the book, Larry stands by and supports Piper, and in real life, they're still together today. Of course, a happy marriage is hardly interesting enough for television, so the show turned him into fans' most-hated character.
"If you ever meet me," he said in 2014, "I'm hoping you'll be able to discover I'm neither the saint of Piper's book, nor the schmuck of successful show."
Red
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Red, ruler of the kitchen, might've been a major adversary to Piper during the first season, but the real Red, who was called "Pop" in the book, was hardly as vengeful. Although Piper did insult her food once, Red simply gave her a stern warning instead of starving her out of the kitchen. According to the book, she told Piper:
"Listen, honey, I do know you just were given right here, so I know that you don't perceive what's what. I'm gonna inform you this as soon as. There's one thing right here referred to as "inciting a riot," and that more or less sh-t you're talking about... you'll get in big bother for that... so take a tip from me, and watch what you assert."After heeding Pop's warning, Piper began to look up to Pop as a mother figure, and the two became friends. Piper even dedicated the memoir to her.
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Lorna
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On the show, Lorna is a friendly, albeit crazy, inmate who wears a lot of makeup and obsesses over a pretend wedding. The character is actually a combination of two women Piper describes in her book, Minetta and Rosemarie. She describes Minetta as a friendly woman who "wore make-up and little gold hoops in her ears, and she looked like she can be a great Italian-American girl known as Ro from New Jersey." But in the book, Minetta leaves prison to attend a halfway house. Later, the book introduces Rosemarie, a woman who's obsessed with weddings.
To protect the identities of the women who were in prison, real Piper used fake names in her memoir, and the show used her depictions to create fictionalized characters. But if "Minetta" or "Rosemarie" ever watched the show, they would pretty much certainly know that Lorna was loosely based on them.
Pornstache
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It's scary to think about, but yep, Pornstache, the creepy, inappropriate guard, was based on a real person. In real life, the inmates nicknamed him "Gay Pornstar," and even nice Larry hated him.
"Gay Porn Star used to be the worst, however he wasn't the handiest guard who performed a role in our dating," Larry said. "They controlled the inmates' lives, and, on visiting days, they controlled our lives, too. We acted stupidly delightful—what I all the time imagined a lobotomy would really feel like—as though it will in some way help us curry choose with the guards. It doesn't work at the DMV, and it doesn't work at the BOP."
Even though "Gay Pornstar" was a jerk, he didn't get stuck in the middle of a love triangle with a fellow inmate, like on the show, so at least there's that. But speaking of love triangles...
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Daya and John
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During season one, we watched as Daya and John had a forbidden love affair. On the show, their relationship was romanticized, but the real story wasn't quite as warm and cuddly. In the book, Piper described an instance where an officer was rumored to be having a thing with an inmate named Cormorant. After Cormorant's bunkmate revealed that the two had been passing love notes secretly to each other, Cormorant was sent to solitary confinement and the officer quit the department. Hardly romantic.
However, according to Beatrice Codianni, a former inmate who served time at Danbury Federal Correctional Institute at the same as Piper, officers-inmate relationships were disturbingly common. So really, Daya and John's story could be about anyone's.
Janae
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In the book, Janae is called "Little Janet," a young 20-year-old woman from Brooklyn who arrives at the prison with Piper. Although that part was left unchanged on the show, the rest of her character's story was entirely fictionalized. In reality, Piper and Janet were best pals, but after going through orientation together, Janet got an early release from prison.
Obviously, the TV version of Janet needed to be more interesting. On the show, she's feisty, combative, and frequently bumps heads with Piper — the complete opposite of the person she was based on.
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Crazy Eyes
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The real Crazy Eyes didn't pee on the floor of Piper's bunk, but she did have wonky eyes and made numerous calculated passes at Piper (much to the annoyance of Piper's roommate, Miss Natalie (who's called Miss Claudette on the show).
"Crazy Eyes was once no longer black," Beatrice told Vice back in 2015. She was familiar with many of the characters Piper wrote about in her memoir. "She was once homosexual, and sure, she used to be bizarre. But she wasn't following people. I mean, I by no means noticed it. She's doing smartly."
Sister Jane Ingalls
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Out of all the characters in the memoir, Sister Jane Ingalls, whose real name is Sister Ardeth Platte, was the only person to give Piper permission to have her real name published in the book. Although on the show she was locked up for handcuffing herself to a flagpole to protest nuclear testing, the real Sister Ingalls actually broke into a missile silo and poured her own blood everywhere to protest against war. Doesn't get any more hardcore than that.
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Yoga Jones
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The delightful yoga instructor was inspired by a real woman called Yoga Janet in the book. She and Piper were close friends, although on the show, the characters are more like distant acquaintances. I guess watching Piper peacefully do yoga every morning just isn't as thrilling as library sex.
Taystee
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The lovable and amusing Taystee is in accordance with an similarly a laugh character called "Delicious" in the book. Although the real Taystee did comment on Piper's "perky breasts," the rest of her actions on the show are purely fictionalized.
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Pennsatucky
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Although her character has evolved the most throughout the past five seasons, the Pennsatucky of season one was pretty similar to the Pennsatucky in the book. In the memoir, Piper described her as "a tender woman from western Pennsylvania who proudly referred to as herself a redneck." The real Pennsatucky was loud and abrasive like her TV counterpart, but she wasn't Piper's enemy. In fact, they were actually friends! And no, she didn't try to kill Piper either.
Sophia
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On the show, she's a transgender woman who commits credit card fraud to pay for a sex change. In the book, Piper describes a glamorous transgender woman who lives next to her bunk named Vanessa. Like Sophia, Vanessa was also denied her hormone pills while in prison, which made life behind bars difficult. However, the rest of TV-Sophia's story was purely fictionalized.
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Nicky
Nicky, the cute drug addict and one in all Red's henchmen, is most commonly fictional. However, in the book, Piper describes a woman named Nina who, along side Minetta, used to be part of Pop's unswerving posse. But her persona doesn't last lengthy in the memoir, as she's later transferred to a drug remedy program. Like the majority of the characters taken from the book, the show decorated her lifestyles to make it extra appropriate for TV.
But hi there, that's why persons are nonetheless observing six seasons later.
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