List of Orange Is the New Black characters

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Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama series created by Jenji Kohan that airs on Netflix. It is based on Piper Kerman's memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, about her experiences in a women's prison.^[1] The series' protagonist is Piper Chapman, a woman sentenced to 15 months in a woman's federal prison for her part in a drug smuggling operation ten years before the start of the first season. It follows Piper's experiences in and out of prison along with the experiences of a diverse ensemble.^[2]

Main cast

Piper Chapman

Piper Chapman (played by Taylor Schilling) is a woman who was sentenced to 15 months in Litchfield Penitentiary for helping her former girlfriend Alex Vause smuggle drug money in Europe several years before the first episode. The series shows Piper's journey through the prison system, beginning with her rough first week, during which she accidentally makes several enemies and struggles to adapt to life on the inside, as well as reuniting with Alex. In prison, she acquires several other nicknames throughout the series. "Crazy Eyes" calls her "Dandelion" because she is tall and blonde, "Pennsatucky" refers to her as "College," and Tricia refers to her as "Brain," because she is more educated than most of the inmates. Piper is assigned a bunk with Claudette, who treats her rudely at first, but eventually warms up to her. Piper is assigned to the Women's Advisory Council (WAC), despite not running and asking Healy not to put her on it. She works in the electrical shop at the prison and inadvertently takes a screwdriver from the tool crib and loses it. Her ambiguous sexuality is a source of amusement to her best friend Polly, and of frustration to her fiancé Larry. She is initially considered non-threatening by most of the other inmates. Although she does her best to have empathy and be helpful to others, she is often accused of being profoundly self-obsessed, and she only comes to realize that this might be true after being sent to prison. In the second season, after perjuring herself at the trial of Alex's former boss, Kubra Balik, Piper is returned to Litchfield to serve the remainder of her sentence. After learning her grandmother is dying, Healy assists her in getting furlough to visit her, and then to attend the funeral, which aggravates some of the other inmates. She is also commissioned by a journalist and friend of Larry's to secretly investigate the prison's books, and later collaborates with Caputo to expose Figueroa's corruption, preventing Piper from being transferred to a prison in Virginia. In the third season, Piper admits to Alex that she was the one that alerted her probation officer that she violated her parole, causing her to be sent back to prison. Piper ends up getting selected for a new work detail creating underwear for Whispers, a lingerie company. After being rebuffed on her attempt to show the company that they were wasting fabric and could make an extra pair of underwear with each sheet, she uses the extra fabric to start a used panty business with her brother and recruits some of the other inmates to wear the panties. At first, she pays the women wearing the panties with ramen noodle seasoning packets, but is forced to give them money after Flaca threatens to cause a strike. However, as her business begins to succeed, she becomes darker and more ruthless, firing Flaca in retaliation for her instigation of the strike. This change in Piper's personality, as well as Alex's paranoia leads to the end of their relationship, and Piper starts a relationship with new inmate Stella Carlin and allowed her to tattoo the words "Trust No Bitch" on her arm. At the end of the third season, Piper discovers that Stella stole her money from her panty business to use as a financial cushion on the outside due to her pending release. Piper at first pretends to forgive her and allows her to keep the money, but later plants several contraband items (including a shiv and some marijuana) in her area and arranges for them to be discovered, causing Stella to be moved to maximum security, while facing an extended sentence. She uses this incident as a warning to the other inmates that may try to cross her.

Alex Vause

Alex Vause (played by Laura Prepon) – Alex is a former drug smuggler for an unspecified international drug cartel. Years prior to the beginning of the series, she took a sexual interest in Piper after meeting her in a bar, and gradually integrated her into the drug trade while they traveled the world living in luxury. Alex once convinced Piper to smuggle cash through customs at an airport in Europe, the crime for which Piper is doing time. Alex specifically named Piper during her testimony, which is what led to Piper's later arrest. After Piper broke up with her, Alex began using heroin, but cleaned up in prison. She states during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that being in prison is her "rock bottom" experience. Alex's mother had worked four jobs, and her father was a washed-up rock star. Alex tracked down her father and struck up a friendship with his drug dealer who subsequently became her industry contact in a drug cartel. Alex is not particularly broken up about being in prison, since she at least managed to free herself of her drug addiction. She admits to Piper and Nicky that she isn't sure what she'll do with her life when she gets out, as her only life skill is "moving massive amounts of heroin." She appears to have moments of depression, telling Nicky that she can no longer "get past the swirling darkness in her brain long enough to land on anything," and mentioning to Piper that upon entering prison, she was on anti-depressants, which she now trades for black eyeliner. Alex is good at reading people and is perceptive, quite often surmising Piper's true feelings and intentions. During the second season she double-crosses Piper and gives incriminating evidence at the trial of her former boss Kubra (after advising Piper to lie), earning herself an early release. When Piper calls her on the phone, she reveals that Kubra had walked free, and she is now in fear of her life. To Piper's dismay, when Alex visits, she reveals that she is planning to skip town and go into hiding. Wanting to get her old girlfriend back in prison with her, Piper secretly asks Polly to tip off her probation officer, causing Alex to violate her probation when he turns up to check on her, to find her brandishing a gun. In the third season, she returns to Litchfield, and despite finding out that Piper was the reason she was arrested, she restarts their relationship. Alex becomes suspicious when Lolly Whitehall, a new inmate originally seen in Chicago, comes to the prison and she assumes that Kubra sent Lolly to kill her. Confronting Lolly in the bathroom, the two fight, and while choking Lolly Alex discovers that she is just a paranoid prisoner that thinks the NSA is watching her. Alex ends up convincing Lolly that she is an undercover agent with the CIA in order to keep her from reporting their confrontation. At the end of the third season, Alex is confronted by Aydin, one of Kubra's enforcers who has been sent to punish her, and is last seen begging for her life.

Sam Healy

Sam Healy (played by Michael J. Harney) – Healy is an experienced Correction Officer and supervisor at Litchfield Penitentiary who has a Master of Social Work and acts as prison counselor to many of the inmates. He is initially presented as someone who, though rigid, genuinely wants to help the inmates under his care. Due to his preference for avoiding confrontation, Healy is contemptuously referred to as "Samantha" by Caputo, who feels that Healy is not tough enough on the inmates. Healy generally appears weary and often tells the inmates what they want to hear so they will leave him alone - he later admits to his own counselor that he is dissatisfied with his job, having gone into it with such idealistic notions of changing the world, but his experiences have left him cynical. Despite this, he still shows a sense of justice, such as forging evidence to show that Suzanne (who was going to take for the fall for an assault she did not commit) was in fact innocent. At home, Healy is in a troubled and apparently loveless marriage with a Ukrainian mail-order bride, who speaks little English, and her mother. It is implied that Healy lied about himself to her on the Internet, and is only staying with him because she has two years left until she gets her green card. Healy has an outspoken personal vendetta against lesbians for unknown reasons, cautioning Piper at the beginning of the series not to be involved with lesbian activity. While early on he appears particularly sympathetic towards Piper and even acts biased in her favor, he increasingly dislikes her as he hears rumors of her alleged lesbian activities. His hatred of lesbians, first presented as a quirk, is later revealed to be a deep-seated pathological problem when he explosively sends Piper to solitary confinement purely because she was dancing closely with Alex. His increasing disdain of Piper culminates in his acquiescence to Tiffany Doggett's attempt to murder her in the first season finale. During the second season, Healy makes amends with Piper, supporting her idea of a weekly prison newsletter and getting her a furlough to visit her dying grandmother. He also attempts to start a group counseling program with Tiffany, but cancels it due to poor attendance, further adding to his emotional exhaustion. Healy later finds himself at odds with new counselor Berdie Rogers and her alternative methods, feeling that she is encouraging the prisoners to engage in deviant behavior.

Claudette "Miss Claudette" Pelage

Claudette "Miss Claudette" Pelage (played by Michelle Hurst) – Miss Claudette is a very strict and feared inmate at the prison, she is often grumpy and holds her bunk-mates to very high standards. Her mysterious origins and fearsome reputation bred numerous legends, with some inmates humorously noting they never see her in the bathrooms. When Piper is assigned to share a cubicle with her, she reacts rudely due to her obsession with cleanliness and dislike of the messy situations Piper brings with her, but softens to her over time. It is later shown that Miss Claudette was inducted into forced child labor and sent to the United States from an unknown French-speaking country (possibly Haiti) to pay off a familial debt. She was brought to America by a boy called Jean Baptiste whom she develops a close friendship and later falls in love. Years later she ran her own illegal cleaning service using similar child labor. She kills a customer who beat and abused one of her cleaning girls, which is the basis for the rumor amongst the prisoners that she is in prison for murder. It is not clear if she was convicted for her business, the killing, or both. She also becomes heartbroken after Baptiste marries another woman.

Miss Claudette never gets mail, has not received a visitor in a decade of being incarcerated, and initially refuses help with her case as she has nothing to live for outside. However, when she receives a letter from Baptiste (whose wife has since died) she decides to appeal her conviction. Initially optimistic, her appeal is denied, and in a fit of anger she nearly strangles a prison guard to death in grief, and is immediately transferred to a maximum security prison with an extended sentence.

Galina "Red" Reznikova

Galina "Red" Reznikova (played by Kate Mulgrew) – Red is a Russian inmate who runs the prison's kitchen as the master chef and is the behind-the-scenes leader of the prison's white population. In her earlier life, she and her husband had migrated from Russia and ran a struggling restaurant in Queens, eventually getting involved with the Russian mafiabosses who frequented their establishment. Red angered the mob bosses by punching one of their wives in the chest (rupturing a breast implant) after being excluded by their group, but later impressed the same boss by offering sound advice that allowed her to swiftly climb the ranks of the organization.

Red is feared and respected by most of the prisoners, and has a lot of influence with Healy. She is the closest to Nicky, with whom she has a mother-daughter relationship, and is always accompanied by Norma and Gina who cater to her needs and work with her in the kitchen. Red runs a smuggling business out of her kitchen, ironically using a food company she helped the Russian mafia set up, but refuses to import drugs of any kind. She actively uses her resources to help some of the inmates overcome drug addictions, although they have only "two strikes" before she abandons them because "Russians don't play baseball". When Mendez begins to force her to use her connections to bring in drugs, she hatches a plan to have him removed from the prison.

Red is initially pleasant to Piper until she unknowingly insults her cooking, and in response Red punishes her by starvation in order to force her to appreciate her food. Piper eventually repairs their relationship by making a lotion to help soothe Red's injured back. Red also has an odd obsession with a chicken that is allegedly seen on the prison grounds from time to time, as she wants to cook "real food" and also wants to absorb its "power." Towards the end of the first season, she's decommissioned from the kitchen by Caputo after he discovers Mendez's drug smuggling operation, which is blamed on Red. Caputo assigns Gloria as the new master chef, and the kitchen is then run by the Latina inmates. In an attempt to take Gloria and her "girls" out of the kitchen, Red sabotaged one of the ovens, causing Gina to get injured, thus straining her relationship with her friends severely. Red eventually becomes Piper's new roommate and befriends her, while at the same time she attempts to come to terms with her loss of friends and status, in the process befriending the "Golden Girls"—the older women in the prison.

Upon discovering a disused sewage drain in an abandoned greenhouse in the prison grounds, Red restarts her smuggling business and reunites her shattered circle of friends. She has history with Vee, a returning prisoner who had befriended her when Red first went to prison years before the series began, only to be violently beaten by Vee who tried to take over her smuggling operation. Vee's appearance in the prison prompts Red to pull herself together and soon find herself in competition with Vee. Following repeated threats made by Vee against Red's girls and her family outside prison, Red attempts to strangle Vee during a blackout, but can't bring herself to finish the job and instead agrees to a truce. However, the truce was a fake and soon after Vee sneaks up on Red in the greenhouse and beats her violently with a sock with a padlock inside, sending her to the prison hospital. She at first keeps her silence to the authorities about Vee as her attacker, preferring instead to plot her revenge, but has a change of heart after speaking with Sister Ingalls.

Throughout the second season, visits from her son reveal that Red's family business is failing and the family itself is having money troubles. When Piper is granted furlough, Red asks her to stop by the shop to check on how things are doing. Piper sees the business is closed down, and the space is for lease, but upon returning to prison she lies and tells Red that the business is doing well. Red eventually discovers that Piper lied about the business's prosperity and berates her for attempting to cover it up. After divorcing her husband for failing to keep the business open, Red starts a friendship with Healy and uses this to get back into the kitchen. Healy convinces Caputo to let her back into the kitchen, but shortly after she takes over the kitchen, it is revealed that the new company in charge of the prison has begun to order prepackaged foods as a cost-saving measure, severely diminishing the quality of the food and limiting her ability to cook traditional meals.

Larry Bloom

Larry Bloom (played by Jason Biggs) – Larry is a Jewish freelance writer trying to establish a journalism career, and Piper's insecure, somewhat selfish fiancé. He is blindsided at the beginning of the series when his then girlfriend Piper reveals to him her former life as a lesbian who smuggled cash for a drug cartel 10 years ago. Larry is initially very supportive of Piper, and proposes marriage to her before she goes inside. As the series progresses, he begins to cool toward her, becoming upset when he learns that Piper's former lover is in the same prison and that she didn't tell him about it. Later on, he begins writing a newspaper article titled "One Sentence, Two Prisoners" about the experience of having a fiancée in prison. This article is published in The New York Times and allows him to move up in the journalistic world. He is close to his parents, who are strongly opposed to his marriage plans. After a conversation with Alex, Larry's latent insecurity gets the better of him, and he breaks off his engagement with Piper. During the second season, he begins an affair with Piper's best friend Polly after becoming a more supportive partner than her husband, who was frequently gone for trips. Shortly after this, Larry and Polly reveal the affair to Piper and asked for her blessing in their relationship. At the end of the second season, Piper asks Larry and Polly to arrange for Alex to be thrown back in prison for violating her probation. Although Larry expresses doubts, Piper is able to appeal to Polly who agrees to help.

Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren

Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren (played by Uzo Aduba) – Suzanne is a mentally unstable inmate with a violent history, however generally passive and friendly. An African-American, she was raised by an adoptive middle class white couple who later had another daughter during Suzanne's childhood. For her race and mental illness, Suzanne was often shunned by her parents' community and her little sister's friends. Her parents tried to provide her with the best care growing up, but, despite their love, Suzanne felt pushed by her mother to accomplish things that she was afraid to do.

Suzanne is a lesbian who develops an obsession with Piper when she first arrives at Litchfield, giving her the pet name "Dandelion" because of Piper's blonde hair. She is initially portrayed as creepy and unpredictable due to her obsession with Piper, stalking her around the prison and submitting a request to bunk together. After being rejected, she urinates in Piper's cubicle. As the show progresses she acts more like a regular inmate, and is revealed that despite her mental illness, she is rather intelligent with a flair for reciting literature and poetry verbatim, often writing her own compositions. She received her nickname "Crazy Eyes" due to her tendency to widen her eyes when she talks. Suzanne is unaware of why exactly people call her "Crazy Eyes," but it is shown that she is hurt by the nickname. During the second season, it emerges that she gets stage fright, and on the night of Piper's altercation with Tiffany, had come outside in the midst of a panic attack, and mistaking Piper for her adoptive mother, punched her in the face, inadvertently making it look like a more even fistfight, saving Piper from severe punishment.

When Yvonne "Vee" Parker enters the prison and forms an African-American gang, Suzanne falls for Vee's charms and maternal influence, being exploited into becoming Vee's "muscle." While zealously loyal to Vee, Suzanne violently beat or threatened any inmates who crossed her, almost acting on command. Later, Vee attempts to coldly trick her into taking the fall for Red's severe beating, as a distraught Suzanne believes she may have done it unconsciously due to her violent history. During the third season, she is encouraged by the new counselor Berdie Rogers to be more creative, causing her to start writing several science fiction erotic stories that become a hit among the women in the prison. Suzanne reveals that she has no sexual experience and is completely naïve in regard to sex, having never actually had a girlfriend before, and that the stories are based on other sources. Eventually, the stories make their way to the staff, causing Rogers to get suspended. Meanwhile, Suzanne becomes nervous upon discovering that one of her fans, Maureen Kukudio, is interested in her romantically. Suzanne backs out of a possible sexual encounter, but is later seen forming a close bond with Maureen towards the end of the season.

Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson

Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson (played by Danielle Brooks) – Taystee is the black representative on the WAC. She works in the prison library and sports a weave made of blond hair given to her by Piper. With coaching from Poussey and a makeover from Sophia, Taystee is paroled from the prison. However, as she has been in institutions most of her life and finds it hard to adapt to the rough life she finds outside the prison walls, she re-offends in violation of her parole and is subsequently sent back to prison. Following her return, she is assigned to the recently vacated bunk of Miss Claudette as Piper's roommate. Taystee is quite intelligent and well-read, with a strong ability to remember information and an aptitude for business and mathematics that initially helped her become involved in Vee's drug ring. Owing to her time spent in the prison law library, she has accrued a wide knowledge base with regard to the law. Taystee's childhood was a rough one, spent in foster homes, and she was eventually taken in by Vee to help with her heroin business. She has known Vee on the outside for 15 years, and becomes a member of her prison gang in the second season. Eventually, when Poussey's actions damage Vee's business, Vee decides to cut her losses and appease her by expelling Taystee from the group. Finally seeing Vee for what she really is, Taystee later rallies the other black inmates to turn on her former idol. During the third season, Taystee finds herself becoming the leader of her group and ends up having to be the one to keep them in control. Later on in the season, she helps Poussey save Brook Soso after a suicide attempt and welcomes her into their group.

Nicky Nichols

Nicky Nichols (played by Natasha Lyonne) – A former drug addict, now Red's most trusted assistant, Nicky has a loud mouth. She swiftly befriends both Piper and Alex, expressing curiosity about what happened between the two of them outside of prison. She is estranged from her mother, a wealthy but extraordinarily selfish socialite who now lives in Brazil. When she was a child, Nicky was raised by a nanny and lived in a separate house from her mother. This estrangement was what initially led to Nicky's drug addiction. Upon arriving in prison, Red had helped her through her worst bouts of cold turkey. For this reason, Nicky has disowned her mother, and now looks up to Red as a mother figure, to the point where she openly calls her "mom" in the presence of other inmates, and Red in turn openly treats her as if she were her daughter. Nicky was involved in a sexual relationship with Lorna until Lorna broke it off, which Nicky is bitter about for some time, but she later develops an interest in Alex. Nicky has a scar on her chest from having heart surgery as a complication of a bacterial infection in her heart, which came from using a dirty needle. Having been clean for two years, Nicky uses sex with the other inmates as a coping mechanism, becoming something of a nymphomaniac in the process. During the second season, Nicky stages a sex-based point scoring competition with Big Boo, during which Nicky even makes advances on Officer Fischer. She gets revenge on Vee for Red's slocking by stealing her stash of heroin, causing her to again face her addiction. In the third season, she attempts to get the stolen heroin out of the prison. She decides to work with Luschek so he could sell it on the outside and split the profits with her. During a surprise inspection, drugs are discovered under Luschek's desk and he blames her for it, causing her to get sent to max. On her way out, she exchanges brief goodbyes with Lorna and Red, and as the prison van pulls up at the facility, Nicky expresses her satisfaction to Tiffany that she will never be able to hurt them or anyone she cares about again, lamenting that, even after kicking her drug addiction, she may never lose her self-destructive tendencies.

Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett

Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett (played by Taryn Manning) – Doggett is a former drug addict originally from Waynesboro, Virginia. Her nickname is a reference to "Pennsyltucky," a slang term for poor rural areas in central Pennsylvania. Tiffany has very bad teeth due to drug abuse, and initially appears to be a fundamentalist Christian. Frequently preaching about God, her religious rants are often laced with racism and hostility. She also caused the ceiling of the prison's chapel to collapse when she tries to hang an over-sized cross from an overhead pipe. For a period of time, Tiffany believed that she was blessed with "faith healing" abilities, after being tricked by the other inmates, and eventually gets sent to the psych ward when she attempts to forcibly "heal" a visiting paraplegic juvenile delinquent. Despite this, it is revealed Tiffany was sent to prison for shooting an abortion clinic worker in broad daylight for making a snarky comment about her having had five previous abortions. The local press believed that it was instead because of her religious beliefs – leading to her receiving funding, support, and even a fan base from some pro-life religious groups.

Tiffany dislikes Piper after she is placed on the WAC committee despite Piper not having run for the position, and also has a long-running hostile relationship with Alex, with the two of them clashing frequently. Although it is Piper who gets Tiffany released from the psych ward, Tiffany declares a violent vendetta against Piper, eventually attempting to kill her after Piper rebuffed her religious beliefs, but instead Piper beats her up badly. After the beating she appears to have gotten over her vendetta, presumably because Piper's beating allowed her to get a new set of porcelain teeth at the expense of the prison. Tiffany loses her religious fervor, becoming more easy-going and moderate in her beliefs after attending regular counseling sessions with Healy. Nevertheless, her old friends are now unafraid to stand up to her, and abandon her, leaving her on her own. Ultimately, she finds an unlikely friend in Big Boo, who has also been abandoned by her friends, and Tiffany subsequently cuts her hair short on Boo's advice.

After the prison's van is stolen, Tiffany replaces Lorna as the prison's van driver and begins a friendship with Charlie "Donuts" Coates, a new guard who initially seems friendly but exhibits unsettling behavior when they are alone. Later, after Coates gets reprimanded by Caputo and put on probation for missing count, he rapes Tiffany in the prison van. Through flashbacks, it is shown she has a warped view of sex due to her upbringing, having prostituted herself for six-packs of soda, and that she was repeatedly raped in the past to the point she no longer fights back. At one point Tiffany had developed a non-abusive romance with a boy called Nathan, but the relationship ended after he was forced to move away with his parents to Wyoming. Big Boo - now her closest friend - devises a plan to get revenge for Coates' actions, but they decide not to go through with it. In order to prevent future rapes, Tiffany fakes a seizure while driving and gets off van detail. However, she sees that Maritza Ramos is her replacement, realizing that she may have provided Coates with a more naive and vulnerable victim.

Dayanara "Daya" Diaz

Dayanara "Daya" Diaz (played by Dascha Polanco) – A Hispanic inmate with artistic talents. She is the daughter of inmate Aleida Diaz, with whom she has a strained relationship, as her mother often ignored her and her sisters as young girls in favor of going out and partying. Daya is often criticized by her fellow Hispanic inmates because she cannot speak fluent Spanish. She develops a romantic relationship with prison guard John Bennett and becomes pregnant with his child. Knowing that Bennett could be imprisoned for her pregnancy, Daya joins forces with Red to trick Mendez into having sex with her so that he can be blamed for her pregnancy. During the second season, she is shown to be increasingly hormonal and emotional due to the pregnancy, a contrast from her sweet demeanor in the first season. She begins to believe that Bennett should serve time for her pregnancy in order to allow them to be together and raise their child after they are both released. In the third season, Bennett proposes to her, and she expects for them to have a relationship after she is released. However, after a meeting with Cesar, Bennett appears to abandon Daya and the baby. Distraught and hopeless, she decides to give her child up for adoption to Mendez's mother Delia. Instead, Aleida tricks Delia into thinking the baby died, while in reality the child was given to Cesar. However, Cesar's home is soon raided by the DEA and Daya's child is taken away.

Lorna Morello

Lorna Morello (played by Yael Stone) – A hyperfeminine and often racist Italian-American inmate, with a strong accent that inexplicably mixes regional features from both New York City and Boston.^[3] Lorna is the first inmate that Piper talks to, since she was in charge of driving the van that transports inmates, and she helps Piper acclimate in her first few days. She had a casual sex relationship with her friend Nicky Nichols, but broke it off due to feelings that she was cheating on her "fiancé" Christopher. It is eventually revealed that Christopher was a man whom she had obsessively stalked and threatened at the same time that she was running a mail-order scam, and the reason she was in prison. Lorna also gets caught in the middle of Pornstache and Red's drug-smuggling operations. When she is left alone during a driving errand while Miss Rosa is at a chemotherapy appointment, she drives to Christopher's house and breaks in. While there, she takes a bath wearing his fiancée's wedding veil and falls asleep, waking up just in time to escape before she is seen. Christopher suspects her for the break-in, and later visits the prison to confront and threaten her, finally shattering her obsessive delusions. At the end of the second season, Lorna allows Rosa to steal the van after finding out that she only had a few weeks to live so that she wouldn't die in prison. In the third season, she becomes depressed and lonely after being relieved of her duties as the van driver. To cope, as well as to get extra commissary money, she decides to start writing to multiple men. After visiting with several different men, she starts a relationship with a man named Vince Muccino. As the two get closer, Lorna manipulates Vince into gathering some of his friends and beating Christopher up. Eventually, Lorna and Vince get married in the prison's visitor center and they consummate their marriage in the visitor's snack room.

Poussey Washington

Poussey Washington (played by Samira Wiley) – An often good-natured and joking inmate, who is best friends with Taystee. During the first season finale, she is revealed to have a great singing voice, and performs an improvised rendition of Amazing Grace. Flashbacks during the second season revealed that she was a military brat, and that her father, who was an officer in the United States Army, would often move her family across the world for assignments. While her father was stationed in Germany, she had a sexual relationship with the daughter of one of her father's German superior officers. When the relationship was discovered, it was implied that the German officer had her father reassigned to a post in the United States. This led to Poussey trying to kill him before being stopped by her father, who subsequently defended her homosexuality from him. In the present, it is implied that she is in love with Taystee, who does not return her feelings on account of being straight, but does make an effort to be gentle with her about this. After failing to get her to market her moonshine, Vee begins to antagonize Poussey, mostly out of jealousy of her closeness to Taystee, and partly out of implied homophobia. She separates Poussey and Taystee, causing a rift in their relationship. She is one of the few black inmates not to fall for Vee's charms, and begins a long campaign to fight her throughout the season. Vee's numerous efforts to force her to back down, including gentle coaxing, threats and even a violent beating from Suzanne are unsuccessful. Eventually, Poussey causes irreparable damage to Vee's tobacco business by smashing up an entire batch of tobacco and pouring bleach on it, and Vee, realizing that no amount of intimidation will stop her, and killing her would be an overreaction, decides to remove her reason for fighting her by ejecting Taystee from the gang. The two later make up after a physical fight in the library, and work together to turn the other black inmates against Vee. In the third season, she has become obsessed with trying to discover who was stealing her moonshine and starts to set traps to catch what she believed was a squirrel stealing it. Feeling depressed, lonely and in need of a girlfriend, she joins Norma's "cult," although she later ends up leaving when she becomes unsatisfied with them. While in the library to help herself to some of her hooch, she discovers Brook passed out from a drug overdose. Realising that Brook will be taken to psych if the truth is known, she takes the foils and gets Taystee and Suzanne instead of the CO's. On Taystee's recommendation, they induce vomiting to purge the medication and try to keep Brook from falling asleep at breakfast the next morning. Once Brook has recovered, the African American gang welcomes her into their circle of friends. Poussey later confronts Norma's cult for the way they treated Brook, and threatens Leanne. She was named after the town of Poussay in North-eastern France, where her father was stationed when she was born, and often finds herself on the receiving end of mockery by the other inmates because of its alternative pronunciation.

Gloria Mendoza

Gloria Mendoza (played by Selenis Leyva) – Red's opposite number among the Hispanic and Latina inmates, though with no organized crime connections. She is a mother of two boys. She organizes domino games and looks out for the other inmates, either by giving advice or by performing Santeria spells (which she refers to as "Catholic plus") for them. She is often critical of Daya's inability to speak Spanish but still accepts her as one of her own. Despite this, she tricks Daya into drinking a concoction that makes her feel sick, at the request of Aleida. When Red is put under investigation after her smuggling operation's cover is blown, Gloria becomes the new head cook, and some inmates prefer her breakfast cooking. Red tries to sabotage Gloria's kitchen operations, but fails to discourage her replacement. At the end of the first season, it is shown that Gloria is starving out Red in a similar way that Red did to Piper at the beginning of the series. During the second season, her backstory reveals that she was a frequent victim of domestic abuse. As she was planning to run from her abusive boyfriend, she was arrested for fraud for allowing customers to exchange food stamps for money at the store she ran and keeping some of the money for herself. She is shown as compassionate and easily susceptible to other's feelings, as she forgave her boyfriend repeatedly, and fell for Vee's charms at the beginning of the season. Upon learning that Norma is plotting to poison Vee, Gloria convinces her to use Santeria to get back at her instead. She also spends the initial part of the season competing with Aleida to be a motherly figure to Daya, but after embarrassing her in front of Bennett, she realizes that it is a job they both do well. In the third season, she is upset after discovering that her son is becoming disrespectful and is failing his classes. She demands that he comes to visit with his homework every week and asks Sophia to allow him to ride with her son when he is doing his weekly visits. After Sophia cuts off the relationship in response to what she saw as Gloria's son being a bad influence, the two have a confrontation in the bathroom, resulting in Sophia pushing Gloria to the ground. Gloria quits working in the kitchen and later feels guilty because Aleida started spreading rumors about Sophia that caused her to get attacked in her hair salon and put in the SHU allegedly for her own safety.

Cindy "Black Cindy" Hayes

Cindy "Black Cindy" Hayes (played by Adrienne C. Moore) – A bubbly, laid-back and perpetually cheerful black inmate, 'Black' Cindy is seen often with the other black inmates. During Taystee's time on the outside, she is seen more frequently joking around with Poussey. Her back story is explained more in the second season, where it is revealed that she worked for the TSA and occasionally stole items from the luggage of travelers. It is shown that she also had a nine-year-old daughter named Monica who was raised by her mother under the pretense that Cindy was her older sister. She is shown to shirk her responsibilities; in one instance, she took her daughter out for ice cream, only to leave her in the car for hours after she spontaneously decided to hang out with some friends. In the third season, she decides to pretend to be Jewish as a response to the inferior food quality resulting from the budget cuts so she can get better tasting kosher meals. After the prison brings in a rabbi to discover who is really Jewish and ends up being outed as a faker, she decides to convert for real and completes her conversion by performing a mikveh in the lake behind the prison.

Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Caputo

Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Caputo (played by Nick Sandow) – One of the administrative officials in the prison. Caputo is initially portrayed as a sleazy character who believes in keeping the inmates dehumanized and who masturbates in his office immediately after his first encounter with Piper. Later, it becomes clear that he genuinely seeks to rehabilitate the inmates and run the prison properly and ethically. He doesn't tolerate corruption, inefficiency, and sexual exploitation, later telling Bennett while berating him for impregnating Daya that he masturbates to control any urges to sleep with one of the inmates. It is shown through flashbacks in the third season that Caputo's desire to do the right thing has always been met with ingratitude and bad results for him. Prior to working at the prison, he quit his band to raise his girlfriend's daughter - who was conceived with one of his band-mates while they were separated - only for them to become successful while he got stuck in a low-paid job in the prison service, and his wife selfishly left him for her daughter's father. Throughout the series, Caputo appeared to have romantic feelings for the new recruit to the staff, Susan Fischer. However, when she did not return the feelings, Caputo became upset and fired her during an argument. He is easily the most competent of the prison staff, being more than capable of dealing with crises without being appeasing or oppressive – on one occasion, upon finding out that there is a hunger strike in the prison, he goes to the strikers directly and tells them straight that most of their demands are either unreasonable or are being resolved independently, without then sending them to the SHU. In addition, he is unafraid to challenge people who are being unreasonable, routinely lashing out at Figueroa for her austere methods, and Healy for his 'lesbian witch hunt.' He also plays bass guitar in a band called "Side Boob," and attempts to grow plants as a therapeutic hobby. Caputo is also seen to be very ambitious, and desired to move up the ladder to eventually become warden. When Piper finds evidence of Figueroa embezzling funds from the prison, Caputo uses it to force her resignation and he becomes the new assistant warden. Although Caputo wished to be seen as a more providing and kinder warden that his predecessor, he soon learned that Litchfield was to close with the prisoners transferred and all the staff fired. Desperate to save his job and those of his co-workers, he convinces Figueroa to give him details on how to make Litchfield desirable to the Management & Correction Corporation, a private investor. This works, and although Litchfield is saved, Caputo finds he is now merely a figurehead who reports to Danny Pearson, the son of one of MCC's senior executives, and is forced to endure severe budget cuts like low-quality pre-packed food and his staff being reduced to part-time while under-qualified staff with minimum training were brought in to fill the void, resulting in many serious mistakes. Around this time, Caputo begins an affair with Figueroa in order to relieve his self-hate at all the compromises he is being forced to make. Due to the incumbent staff angry at their hours and wages being cut as well as being expelled from their union due to working for a private company, Caputo suggests they form their own union and agrees to lead it. When Sophia is seriously assaulted by other inmates while the CO on duty runs off in a panic, she threatens the prison with a lawsuit. As a result, Sophia is taken into "protective custody," which is actually just her being thrown into isolation as punishment for her threat to sue. Caputo and Pearson argue with the latter's father against this unfair treatment, and his frustration results in Pearson quitting. Later, while in bed with Figueroa, she reminds him that his constant efforts to help others have only ever held him back, and tells him that he should start looking after his own interests more - that, instead of fighting for his employees, none of whom have shown him any gratitude for his efforts, he should instead try and advance his own interests within the corporation. In response, Caputo filled Pearson's position and immediately broke up the union causing most of the older, more experienced staff to immediately go on strike.

Carrie "Big Boo" Black

Carrie "Big Boo" Black (played by Lea DeLaria) – A prison inmate and lesbian, she has had several "wives" during her incarceration. Tricia and Boo have had problems in the past fighting over a girl. She has Piper helping her write a letter for her appeal and takes the missing screwdriver from Piper's bunk unbeknownst to Piper, which she uses to aid in masturbation. She later returns the screwdriver to Piper when Piper becomes stressed over the fact that Tiffany is threatening to kill her. During the first season, Boo is often accompanied by a dog she named "Little Boo." She got rid of the dog by the second season, saying things were getting "weird." It is implied Boo considered using the dog to stimulate herself sexually. She later participates in a competition with Nicky to see who can have sex with the most inmates. Boo has little loyalty to anyone and, trying to ingratiate herself with the powerful Vee, betrays Red by telling Vee about the tunnel. As a result, she is shunned by Red's family, and Vee rejects her for snitching. Afterwards, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Tiffany - which soon develops to be a close bond - and, when Red is hospitalized following an assault by Vee, Boo helps Nicky locate and hide Vee's drug stash. During the third season, she is inspired when she realizes that Tiffany is getting donations from numerous religious groups and decides to pretend to renounce homosexuality in order to get a similar support base. However, when she is speaking to a reverend that openly disparages homosexuals she is unable to continue her ruse and angrily insults him in retaliation.

In flashbacks, it is shown that, as a teenager, her parents - particularly her mother - had strongly disapproved of her tomboyish dress sense and appearance and attempted to force her to be more feminine. By the time she was forty, she had adopted a "butch" self-image which she protected militantly, but at the same time struggled to contain her inner anger and rage at the world brought on by these experiences, and she had become completely estranged from her parents. At one point, in a conversation with Tiffany, she expresses the view that one should not allow one's beliefs to destroy relationships, as she herself holds deep regret and guilt for having never made peace with, or even attempting to say goodbye to her mother before she died. Later in the series, she attempts to console Tiffany after discovering that she was raped by Coates. She comes up with a plan to get revenge by anally raping him with a broomstick but Tiffany is unable to go through with it. She later witnesses Piper framing Stella as revenge for stealing the money from the used panty business and cannot help but be impressed by her ruthless action.

Marisol "Flaca" Gonzalez

Marisol "Flaca" Gonzales (played by Jackie Cruz) – One of the Hispanic inmates, she is shown to be rather misinformed, if not totally dim at times, genuinely believing that black people cannot float due to their bone density. This leads to Maritza stating that her head is full of "caca" and Aleida referring to her as "Flacaca". She appears to be a goth, wearing gothic makeup and being obsessed with such bands as The Smiths and Depeche Mode. She is also somewhat aggressive, getting into a brawl with Taystee over an ice-cream cone. She and Maritza have a very close friendship, and on Valentine's Day in the second season, the two have an intimate conversation about their lack of love in the prison, and end up kissing passionately. After initially laughing at what has just happened, a shocked Flaca becomes upset and begins to cry, while Maritza consoles her. During the third season, Flaca's backstory is revealed as a high-school student that sold fake acid to students. One student ended up believing it so much that he jumped off the roof of the school and ended up nearly dying. Flaca was thus arrested for fraud, and endangerment, despite her belief that she did nothing illegal as the blotters were only placebos. At the prison, she becomes a part of Piper's used underwear business. Discovering that Piper was making a large amount of money selling the panties on the outside, she organizes a protest with the other women to get a larger cut of the profits. Piper agrees to her demands but fires her in revenge. Later, she is able to convince Piper to allow her to participate in the business again so that she can use the money to help pay for her mother's lymphoma treatment.

Recurring cast

Litchfield inmates

Sophia Burset (played by Laverne Cox) – Sophia is a transgender woman who went to prison for credit-card fraud that she committed to finance her sex reassignment surgery. Originally a firefighter named Marcus, Sophia was unhappy with living as a man and decided to transition with the support of her wife Crystal. She has a young son named Michael, who had difficulty with her transition and turned her in to authorities. In the prison, she works as a hairdresser and spends the first half of the first season railing against a reduction in her hormone dosage, which is stated to be over concerns about liver damage, but she is convinced it is discrimination (in fact, it is hinted at being due to Figueroa's embezzlement). She becomes a friend of Sister Ingalls, originally in an attempt to convince the nun to give her some of her hormones. Sister Ingalls convinces her to try to reconcile with her son, and also to let Crystal move on. Sophia is, overall, kind and understanding, albeit a little stubborn. Early on, she trades with Piper for a lock of hair, in return for some cocoa butter Piper needs to create her lotion for Red. They later develop an amicable relationship, often trading gifts or advice. She, like Piper, also seems to be more educated than many of her fellow inmates, being concerned about issues such as healthcare and benefits. During the second season, she is shown being visited by her son in prison for the first time, and they are seen making amends. Sophia also develops friendships with Red, who goes to her for a makeover when she learns Vee has returned, and surprisingly, Tiffany, who has mellowed out considerably. During the third season, Sophia agrees to allow Gloria's son ride with her son for weekly visits. The two start a friendship that results in her son acting out, causing Sophia to rescind her offer and cause a rift between Gloria and her that culminated into a violent confrontation. She later finds out that her son was the instigator of a violent attack of another child, but refuses to apologize to Gloria. Sophia ends up being attacked by other inmates in her beauty salon, during which the CO on duty runs away to fetch Caputo rather than intervening herself. Sophia tells Caputo that she is willing to bring a lawsuit against the prison if they don't take appropriate measures. When this is reported to MCC, they respond by throwing Sophia in the SHU claiming it is for her protection, when in reality she is being punished for her threat to sue.
Janae Watson (played by Vicky Jeudy) – A gifted former high school track star that was arrested after she became involved with a criminal boyfriend and was caught robbing a check-cashing establishment. Flashbacks reveal that her downward spiral was mostly her own fault, as her boyfriend's superior, the local gang leader, had made numerous efforts to persuade her to stay out of the criminal life, and to take advantage of her track scholarship, including ejecting her from his parties. She is initially very rude and standoffish toward Piper and has problems with authority, confronting Miss Claudette and the prison guards. Janae is assigned to the tool crib in the electrical shop and loses a screwdriver on her first day. After refusing to be searched by a male prison guard, Janae is sent to the SHU by Caputo. She blames Piper for this since Piper lost the screwdriver that started the whole confrontation. Piper is able to make it up to her later by convincing the prison to reopen the running track so that Janae can run again. After getting out of SHU, Janae takes out her anger on Yoga Jones, who slaps her in the face after a confrontation when Janae mocks her about why she is in prison. However they later talk it out and are able to form a trusting relationship. In the second season, she joins Vee's gang as she gets a cut of the cigarette money. She is sent down to SHU again after being caught with the cigarettes in her bunk. She is visibly affected by her second time in the SHU, and once again her relationship with Yoga Jones becomes strained when she rejects Yoga Jones' compassion. Later, she is convinced by Vee to pin Red's beating on Suzanne, but has a change of heart and attempts to recant her testimony along with Black Cindy. During the third season, she is shown working on the lingerie detail with several of the other inmates. She is the only member of her group to object to allowing Brook to join their group after her suicide attempt. In flashbacks, it is shown that her father was a member of the Nation of Islam, and that she was raised in an observant Muslim household. Upon receiving her track scholarship for college, her father forbade her from running track due to her uniform not being modest enough and going against her Muslim faith. In their subsequent argument, her hint that she would renounce Islam resulted in a slap from her father. This relationship may have contributed to her issues with authority.
Tricia Miller (played by Madeline Brewer) – An inmate who grew up on the streets and one of the youngest inmates. She is a drug addict and lesbian who sports a tattoo on her throat and trademark blonde cornrows. While outside prison, Tricia showed kleptomaniac tendencies, often taking things that she promised herself she would later pay for, reasoning she would not be a thief if she did so. She kept a list of all the things she ever stole with the intention of settling all her debts when she had the money. She is caught by Miss Claudette attempting to plant drugs in her girlfriend Mercy's bunk so she would get more time, but ultimately backs down and lets her girlfriend get released. She asks Piper to help her in writing her letter of appeal so that she can get out faster and be with Mercy, although she has not been able to contact her. Tricia gets drugs from the prison guard Mendez in exchange for sexual favors. When he is late with his deliveries, she goes into drug withdrawal and is taken to the SHU. Due to Red's intolerance for drugs and it being her "second offense," Tricia is ejected from Red's "family." Red later admits that she had only intended Tricia's ejection to be temporary, and to force her to learn her lesson. Mendez tries to blackmail her into selling drugs for him again, though she tells him she wants to be clean again. Later, Mendez notices that she is in a drugged out state, and realising that she has helped herself to some of his stash, and that this might reveal the presence of drugs in the prison, he quickly hides her in an empty broom cupboard. After discovering she was specifically requested for a Scared Straight visit with delinquent kids, he returns to get her, and discovers that she is dead, revealing that she had in fact taken the entire bag - most likely in a final act of sacrifice to protect Red and her family. In a panic, he manipulates the situation to make it look like a suicide by hanging. A grieving Red blames herself for driving Tricia away. The truth of her death is never discovered by the administration, although Nicky quickly deduces what happened and tells Red.
Erica "Yoga" Jones (played by Constance Shulman) – An older Caucasian inmate who teaches yoga. She has an unusually calm, peaceful demeanour, completely out of place in the prison environment, and as such gives no indication about why she might be in prison. Her calmness shatters, however, when she has a fight with an angry Janae, who deduces that her commitment to spirituality and yoga stems from her having committed a particularly heinous crime, and cruelly suggests that she may have killed a child - leading to Jones snapping and hitting her across the face. Later, while the two are working in the rec room, Jones explains that while she was a marijuana farmer in California, she accidentally shot and killed an 8-year old child she mistook for a deer, and is therefore in prison for manslaughter. Watson realises, as she had thought, that Jones is indeed using her yoga and commitment to spirituality to cope with the intense emotional pain and guilt that she feels as a result of her crime. During the second season, she is seen participating in a hunger strike with Brook, to protest prison conditions. This is also her attempt to protest Janae having been thrown in the SHU, but her efforts are met with indifference by Janae herself, who coldly rebuffs her.
Brook Soso (played by Kimiko Glenn) – An inmate of Japanese and Scottish descent who first appeared in the second season, and landed in prison due to political activism. Chatty and somewhat ditzy, Brook attempts to befriend a non-reciprocating Piper, who had been kind to Brook on her first night in prison. Brook assumes that Piper wants to be friends due to her kind treatment, but finds out it was a ruse when she attempts to sell Brook out to Big Boo in order to get her blanket back. Later, Brook has sex with Nicky as part of Nicky's sex game with Big Boo, but manages to annoy her by constantly talking during the entire experience. Due to her initial refusal to shower, she annoys many of the inmates and is eventually ordered to be forcibly showered by Figeroa. Eventually, she becomes an activist and attempts to stage a hunger strike to protest the prison's cruel treatment, which inspires others to join her cause. In the third season, she attempts to join a group led by Norma but is pushed away by Leanne, who then starts bullying her. Feeling that she was suffering from depression, Healy attempts to prescribe her antidepressants, but this is rebuffed by her new counselor Berdie Rogers. After Rogers is suspended, Healy refers her to a doctor to see if a prescription is necessary. During her evaluation, she steals a handful of pills - later discovered to be Benadryl - and attempts to overdose on them. Brook is saved by Poussey, Suzanne and Taystee, who look after her while she recovers, and subsequently take her into the African-American gang, with the approval of Black Cindy and the reluctant approval of Janae. Following her failed suicide attempt, she tells Healy that she feels that he is horrible at his job and that he just makes her feel worse whenever they talk.
Yvonne "Vee" Parker (played by Lorraine Toussaint) – The main antagonist of the second season. Described as a street-tough inmate who used to run a drug business, using kids as runners, she returns to jail after a long stint outside. She has a long history with many of the inmates, particularly Red, whom she had had beaten ruthlessly when attempting to take over her smuggling business, and Taystee, whom she had taken under her wing from an early age. Vee is ruthless, manipulative and something of a sociopath, more than willing to take on any naive young inmate or criminal and drop them when they are no longer of use to her. Upon returning to prison, she builds up a gang among the black population, many of whom are manipulated by her charming and maternal influence, with the exception of Poussey, who is one of the only inmates with the courage to take her on. She then forms a tobacco operation, and after Red rejects her attempted takeover of her smuggling operation and one of her friends attempts to kill her, begins a gang war with the Caucasian gang. Red almost succeeds in killing her by strangling, but she relents at the last minute and decides to call a truce. However, Vee was only pretending to give up, and instead violently beats Red with a slock (a lock in a sock), sending her to the prison infirmary. Her arrogance and ruthlessness ultimately leads to her downfall when Nichols, Red's second-in-command, steals her supply of heroin, causing her to become paranoid. Her attempt to frame Suzanne for Red's beating causes all of her girls to turn on her, and she manages to escape through Red's supply tunnel. When Vee reaches the main road, Miss Rosa, who has just hijacked a prison van, sees her at the side of the road and, remembering an earlier incident with her, deliberately veers off the road and runs her over, killing her.
Rosa Cisneros (played by Barbara Rosenblat and Stephanie Andujar in flashbacks) – An older Latina inmate who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the second season episode "Appropriately Sized Pots," flashbacks reveal that as a young woman, Rosa was part of a ring of professional bank robbers. After making clean getaways from three successive heists, she made the mistake of impulsively robbing a fourth bank at random which ultimately sent her to prison. The flashbacks also reveal that most of the men she's loved died moments after she kissed them when a job has been successful, which has led her to believe she is cursed. Throughout the second season, she routinely goes to the nearby hospital for chemotherapy, and befriends a teenager who is also on chemo. Eventually, she is told that her cancer is aggressive, and she has between three and six weeks left to live. When they return to the prison, they discover the place is on lockdown. As Officer Ford goes to investigate, Lorna decides to give Rosa the opportunity to steal the prison van and escape, urging her not to die in prison. As she drives away, Rosa sees the escaped Vee at the side of the road and runs her over in revenge for having treated her so rudely. In the opening of the third season, a CO reveals that, after running Vee down, Rosa committed suicide by driving into a nearby quarry. She appears in a flashback of Caputo's first day working in the prison and is one of the first inmates that he talks to.
Gina Murphy (played by Abigail Savage) – A member of Red's crew in the prison kitchen, it is implied that she was incarcerated for murder and embezzlement. She is often seen with Norma Romano. When Red's scheme to sabotage Gloria backfires, Gina's arm is set on fire when an oven which Red had sabotaged explodes in flame. During the second season, she is seen with shorter hair, several severe burn marks on the side of her neck, and a more sullen demeanor. She angrily rebuffs several of Red's attempts to win back her friendship, but eventually forgives her when Red finally realizes that she hasn't given her the one thing she was looking for, an apology. Later, she notices Nichols contemplating taking a hit of heroin that she got from Vee's gang, and harasses her about it for days, eventually pressuring her to take the heroin to Red.
Sister Jane Ingalls (played by Beth Fowler) – She is a former nun who helps with services in the prison chapel. When Sophia finds out she is getting hormone pills, she tries to cozy up to the Sister to obtain some. Instead, she tries to convince Sophia to reconnect with her son. Jane is in prison for chaining herself in place at a nuclear weapons base during a political protest. In line with her faith, Jane accepts Sophia as a close friend and strongly dislikes Tiffany's religious fundamentalism. She is shown to be rather modernistic and "hip" in her faith and views, and can be very blunt and angry when she needs to be. The second season reveals her past as a nun who first became an activist during the Vietnam War, but seemed more interested in her fame than doing genuine good works. It is revealed that she was defrocked by the Catholic Church for her actions, but that she has neglected to tell any of the other inmates. After joining Brook's hunger strike, Ingalls gets carried away and takes over, cutting out Leanne and Angie, before being hospitalized. After the incident, a number of nuns gather at the prison and stage a sit-in while Caputo tries desperately to negotiate with Ingalls. She only relents after reaching an agreement with Red in the prison hospital—she would eat, but only if Red told the truth about the attack against her. In the third season, she is one of the inmates that pretends to be Jewish in an effort to gain Kosher meals and was able to convince a rabbi that was screening the "Jewish" women for possible fakers that she was really Jewish, since her Christian teaching gave her enough knowledge of the Jewish faith to be able to persuade him.
Aleida Diaz (played by Elizabeth Rodriguez) – Daya's incarcerated mother. She was incarcerated for helping her boyfriend with his drug dealing business and taking the blame for him. In flashbacks, it is shown that she had little concern for her children and was obsessed with her boyfriend. She says during a visitation that she is upset that he won't visit her. She treats Daya rudely in the prison, and goes so far as to attempt to seduce Bennett to make Daya angry. She later shows a softer side and advises Daya to have her baby, even going so far as to concoct a plan to allow Bennett to keep his job. She also finds herself competing with Gloria to care for Daya during the more difficult times of her pregnancy, finally forcing her to take on a maternal role in her daughter's life. She has high status among the other Hispanic inmates. During the second season, she battles with Gloria to be a mother to Daya, and manipulates Bennett to bring in contraband from the outside hidden in his prosthetic leg. During the third season, she attempts to convince Daya to give her unborn child to Pornstache's mother Delia so that she would have a better life and to get a monthly payment from her. Later, she decides that it would be better for Daya to keep her baby and tells Delia that Daya's baby died during childbirth while in reality Cesar picked up the child. Despite this, her cruel and vindictive side is shown when she spreads deliberately ignorant and transphobic rumors about Sophia to the other inmates in response to a fight between her and Gloria, resulting in Sophia being attacked by the other inmates, something which weighs heavily on Gloria's conscience.
Norma Romano (played by Annie Golden) – Norma is a member of Red's crew who refuses to speak due to insecurity, as she has a severe stutter (revealed in flashbacks). She works in the prison kitchen, and a flashback reveals that she was the first inmate Red interacted with upon her own arrival. She is often seen with Gina Murphy, as the two of them work in the kitchens together and cater to all of Red's needs. In the first season finale, Romano steals the show at the Christmas pageant, revealing a beautiful singing voice. After Red's attempt to sabotage Gloria hurts Gina, Norma expresses frustration and angrily storms away from Red, leaving her in tears. She and Red eventually reconcile, and she attempts to create arsenic to kill Vee after Red's beating. Gloria convinces her that it is a futile effort and that they should hex Vee instead. During the third season, it is revealed that, in her younger days, she became one of the many wives of a hippie cult leader, warmed by his compassion and kindness to her. Years later, after all of the other wives had long since abandoned him, he had become bitter, twisted and verbally abusive. Eventually, he had berated her for staying with him for so long. In a surge of anger, she pushed him off of a cliff to his death, presumably leading to her imprisonment. Back at the prison, she ends up being the focus of a cult inside of the prison. She eventually throws Leanne out of the cult after being confronted by Poussey over Brook's failed suicide attempt. At the end of the third season finale, Norma is the first inmate to run out of the prison yard towards the lake when the fence is taken down, which inspires all of the other inmates to follow her lead.
Leanne Taylor (played by Emma Myles) – An inmate who was often seen with Tiffany during the first season. She almost fanatically followed everything Tiffany says and was her groupie, or right-hand woman. She is also addicted to drugs and has been seen exchanging sexual favors with Mendez. In the second season, she stands up against Tiffany and is shown to break off into her own character with her friends, leaving Tiffany by herself. She also was one of the inmates that joined Brook during her hunger strike and attempted to politely suggest that she needed to start bathing before Tiffany interrupted her by bluntly telling Brook that she stank. During the third season, it is revealed that she was Amish and that she became addicted to drugs during her Rumspringa. After choosing to be baptized, she was arrested after a bag with her ID in it was found with drugs. She was convinced to go undercover for the police in exchange for immunity and later leaves her community after overhearing her father wondering what to do with her. Back at the prison, she joins, and eventually spearheads, a cult based on Norma being able to perform miracles. She soon reveals herself to be cruel, bigoted and mean-spirited, when she starts bullying and discriminating against Brook, who in turn attempts to commit suicide. After learning of this, Norma dismisses Leanne in anger, leaving her in the same position she left Tiffany - isolated and friendless.
Angie Rice (played by Julie Lake) – Leanne's best-friend, and another former follower of Tiffany. During the second season, she was one of the inmates that joined Brook's hunger strike in an attempt to improve prison conditions. During the third season, she starts beveling that Norma is able to perform miracles after a stash of heroin Nicky hid in a light fixture in the laundry room fell out. After finding the drugs, she shares them with Leanne and finds herself getting threatened by Luschek if she says anything about them. Later, she joins Norma's cult and is accidentally released months early due to a mistake caused by MCC's new computer system and the incompetence of the new staff. Believing a miracle has occurred, Angie leaves, but the error is quickly spotted and a low-key search is conducted. Caputo finds Angie at the bus station. He sits and talks with her, and she apologises for escaping, admitting that she has nowhere to go. Sympathetic, Caputo drives her back to the prison in his car, promising her that a short stint in SHU will be her only punishment.
Loretta (played by Cristina J. Huie) – Leanne's friend, and another former follower of Tiffany.
Maria Ruiz (played by Jessica Pimentel) – An inmate who acts as the Hispanic representative for WAC and was pregnant at the beginning of the series. When she goes into labor she is taken to a hospital, and later returns to the prison after having her newborn taken away from her, which elicits sympathy from her fellow inmates. She describes Daya and Aleida's relationship as a "cautionary tale" and states that a minute with them is better than Plan B, as she would never talk to her daughter the way Aleida does toward Daya, or allow her daughter to talk to her the way Daya does Aleida. During the second season, she is visited several times by her stoic, quiet boyfriend Yadriel and her child. When it appears she will be transferred to a prison in Virginia, she begs him to be a good, proactive parent and speak to their child more, and later confides in Piper that she is afraid he will be too weak to be faithful during her entire sentence. However, in the second season finale, she is last seen being visited by her boyfriend and her daughter, happy to see that he is taking a deeper role as a father and apparently plans to stay true to her. During the third season, she is devastated when her boyfriend decides not to bring her daughter to the prison anymore, with him saying that he doesn't want her to think that is normal for her mother to be in prison as she got older.
Maritza Ramos (played by Diane Guerrero) – A Hispanic inmate. In contrast to her rougher, more hardened cellmates, Maritza is quite demure, and has a playful, sassy personality. She is often seen with Flaca, with whom she has a rivalry and close friendship; she is generally portrayed as somewhat more intelligent than her friend. On Valentine's Day, she and Flaca are having an intimate conversation in the kitchen, and when Flaca gives her a friendly peck on the lips, the two end up passionately kissing. They initially laugh in shock, before Flaca breaks down in tears, and Maritza consoles her, looking visibly shaken herself. She has a child on the outside. In the third season, she is distraught when Flaca is accepted to another work detail, but reunites with her friend when she joins Piper's used panty business. At the end of the season, she replaces Tiffany as the prison van driver after Tiffany faked a seizure to get away from Officer Coates.
Stella Carlin (played by Ruby Rose) - A young Australian inmate introduced in the third season, assigned to the prison's new garment factory with Piper. Strikingly beautiful, androgynous and intelligent, but also somewhat mysterious, she takes an immediate shine to Piper, and the two become fast friends. Stella is the first to volunteer for Piper's new used panty business and provides her with additional support in its management, all the while openly flirting with her. As Piper and Alex's relationship starts to suffer due to Alex's paranoia and Piper's darker personality, she and Stella become closer, and eventually kiss, although Stella continues to maintain a respectful distance at Piper's request, to spare Alex's feelings. Later, when Piper and Alex decide to break up, she asks Stella to become her partner (both professionally and personally), despite the fact that Stella's release date is imminent. Shortly before Stella is released, however, she steals all of the money Piper has made from the business. Piper quickly deduces (based on the fact that only three people knew where the phone she used to transfer the money was kept) that it was Stella, and confronts her. Stella begs for forgiveness, justifying herself by the fact that her family are all back in Australia, she has no money left, and that she will have no place to go upon her release. Piper at first appears to forgive her, and states that she can keep the money. Shortly afterwards, Piper turns up at Stella's cubicle and gives her a kiss goodbye, which confuses Stella, as she still has a couple of days left. At that moment, the COs arrive and search her bunk, discovering some contraband items that Piper had planted. As Stella is removed with the possibility of facing an extended sentence in maximum security, Piper gives her a final, cold smile, showing her the "Trust No Bitch" tattoo that Stella herself had given her.
Anita Demarco (played by Lin Tucci) – An older inmate who was one of the first to befriend Piper. Piper learns that when DeMarco first arrived in prison many years earlier, she had a heart attack, and now sleeps with a face mask and CPAP machine. DeMarco is a constant roommate of Miss Rosa, and they seem to have a steady stream of newbies who stay in their room until the newbies are assigned permanent bunks.
Blanca Flores (played by Laura Gomez) – A Hispanic inmate. The other inmates thought she was insane, as she appeared to have animated conversations in Spanish with the Devil while inside a restroom stall. Piper later discovered that Blanca is actually of sound mind, and had actually been speaking to her boyfriend, "Diablo," with a cell phone that she had hidden behind a tile in the stall, while feigning madness so nobody would suspect anything. Upon discovering the phone is missing, however, her grief and anger leads to a violent tantrum that is mistaken for a breakdown, and she is taken away to psych. She has finally returned by the second season and stopped pretending to be insane, revealing herself to be plain-speaking, blunt and low key, and later attempts to blackmail Bennett into getting her a new phone. During the third season, against Gloria's orders, she attempts the test which will get her into the new work detail, and is forced to put up with Flaca's constant pestering and fidgeting. Later, she is embarrassed when Flaca reveals her participation to Gloria in anger.
Maureen Kukudio (played by Emily Althaus) – A younger inmate introduced in the third season, Maureen becomes an obsessive fan of Suzanne's new erotica series, which she began writing in the drama class they both attended. She perpetually irritates Suzanne by offering her ideas for her upcoming chapters and writing her own fan-fiction. As time progresses, however, it becomes clear that Maureen is romantically interested in Suzanne, who becomes nervous, as she has never actually had a girlfriend or any sexual experience - she writes her erotica almost entirely from imagination. She backs out of a sexual liaison with Maureen in one of the storage closets, due to her apprehension and lack of sexual experience, but the two continue to flirt, and they are brought closer in the final scene, when Suzanne retrieves a terrapin that Maureen threw away after it bit her foot.
Mercy Valduto (played by Katie Iacona) – Tricia Miller's girlfriend and Big Boo's ex-girlfriend. During the week of her release she antagonized Big Boo, but they still departed on good terms. Tricia was prepared to plant drugs on Mercy to extend her sentence so they could stay together, but Miss Claudette talked Tricia out of it, determined not to let her screw up Mercy's life. Mercy leaves the prison intending to stay out of trouble and stay in contact with Tricia. Tricia later reveals she has lost contact with Mercy, but remains optimistic.
Mei Chang (played by Lori Tan Chinn) – An irritable, laconic Chinese woman who runs the prison commissary. In the first and second seasons, she is shown to be somewhat ill-tempered and antisocial, though widely accepted. In the third season, her secretive everyday routine and murky past is revealed. Chang emigrated to the U.S. from Hubei province with the intention of marrying a businessman. However, he rejects her upon seeing her, mostly because of her skin disorder. To pay off her debts, Chang worked in an Chinese herbal medicinal shop for her brother. Stating that he has no better use for her and that she is practically invisible, Chang's brother sends her out to accompany the gang members who purchase and distribute illegal medicines to shops like theirs. During a transaction with a Korean smuggler, Chang revealed herself to be sharper and more ruthless than she let on when she discovered that the products were fake, prompting the smuggler to attack the gangster who had accompanied her. She saves the gangster's life by knocking out the smuggler with a tire iron, and he promises to repay her. She has the gangster and his associates bring her the businessman who spurned her. During the confrontation, the businessman curses and spits at her, prompting her to order the gangsters to cut out his gallbladder as she leaves. In prison, she maintains a set of rituals which confuse the other inmates, and makes her own food using what she can smuggle out of the canteen and obtain from commissary. She spends her afternoons watching Chinese TV shows on a smartphone she keeps hidden in one of the prison sheds, and keeps a bag of tangerines hidden in the long grass near the prison fence. Despite her solitary behavior, she appears to enjoy observing the other inmates around her.
Jimmy Cavanaugh (played by Patricia Squire) – One of the "Golden Girls," Jimmy is an elderly woman with severe dementia or Alzheimer's. She wanders out of the prison and is seen at a bar by Caputo, whereupon she is returned to the prison. Later, she jumps off the raised stage in the chapel, thinking she is jumping into a swimming pool, and breaks her arm. The prison system decides that her care is too expensive and grants her a "compassionate release," which amounts to their dropping her off at a bus stop to be left to her own devices, completely senile and incapable of caring for herself.
Lolly Whitehill (played by Lori Petty) – Lolly is first seen on the plane that is taking Piper to Chicago in the beginning of the second season. While in Chicago, she is attacked in the prison yard after getting in a confrontation with another prisoner. During the third season, she is transferred to Litchfield and starts a trend of inmates requesting kosher meals. She seemed to have an obsession with Alex and is seen keeping notes of her daily routine. During a work detail, she breaks a window and keeps a piece of glass from the window. She is confronted by Alex in the bathroom and attempts to use the glass shard to defend herself before being overpowered and nearly strangled by Alex in a panic. During their struggle, Lolly claims that she is being framed for treason by the NSA and that the prison is bugged, and is revealed to be paranoid and delusional.
Frieda, Irma, and Taslitz (played by Dale Soules, Yvette Freeman, and Judith Roberts) – "The Golden Girls" are a group of seniors in the prison who befriend Red. They help Red set up the greenhouse and help to grow the plants and with Red's smuggling. Despite appearing to be harmless old ladies, they are actually quite dangerous and hardened - unlike the other inmates, they possess and carry shivs. In one scene, when tasked with taking back Red's merchandise from the kitchen, they calmly threaten Gloria's staff with these weapons. They also reveal that, whereas most of the other inmates are there for drug-related offences, fraud or petty larceny, they are in prison for more violent offences: Frieda, for instance, mentions having been incarcerated for cutting off her husband's penis. Terrified, the staff backs off and allows the three to walk out with the supplies. On their way out, they express dissatisfaction at being underestimated because of their age. Later, when Red abandons the greenhouse, they feel it's because of Vee, so they plot to kill her. Taslitz volunteers to do the job, and tails a woman she thinks is Vee as she leaves the showers. Upon reaching an empty corridor, she brutally shanks the woman, but it turns out to be the wrong person. Taslitz is sent to the SHU, and Vee takes it as a declaration of war.
Weeping Woman (played by Tamara Torres) – This unnamed inmate is frequently seen in the background while Piper is on the phone. During the third season, she becomes a part of the cult that follows Norma.
Jeanie "Babs" Babson (played by Danielle Herbert) - An African-American inmate who is a member of Norma's cult.
Ginsberg (played by Jamie Denbo) - A Jewish inmate who helps Black Cindy convert to Judaism.

Litchfield staff

George "Pornstache" Mendez (played by Pablo Schreiber) – A corrupt, perverted, and seemingly psychopathic correction officer, who frequently abuses his authority. He seems to be the most ruthless of all the COs, and is seen sexually assaulting and humiliating the inmates at every opportunity. His personality can be both laughably exaggerated as well as frightening. Mendez uses his position as a guard to smuggle drugs and contraband into the prison until the prison begins to search the guards as well. He tries to strike a deal with Red to use her connections to smuggle drugs in, but she refuses until he puts more pressure on her. He often trades contraband for sexual favors with the inmates and is the one who supplies Tricia with the drugs that eventually kill her via an overdose. He covers up Tricia's death to make it look like a suicide. He is put on unpaid leave after he is caught having sex with Daya in a closet. Mendez is shown to be in love with Daya and often sends her love letters anonymously after he leaves Litchfield. In the second season, Figueroa rehires Mendez to fill in for Fischer after she was fired and he immediately continues his arrogant and antagonizing demeanor toward the prisoners. When Bennett tells Caputo that Daya is pregnant, Caputo assumes Mendez is the father and uses it as an excuse to have him arrested in front of the inmates and reporters. During the third season, Mendez is seen in a men's prison talking to his mother Delia about his love for Daya and how it is keeping him going in prison. She tells him that he isn't the baby's father, but he is in denial, stating that he knows that he is the father. Following this, Delia decides to drop the subject.
John Bennett (played by Matt McGorry) – A correction officer and a former soldier. He starts a secret friendship with Daya that eventually turns into a romantic relationship. He has an artificial leg, which Daya discovers before performing oral sex on him in a utility closet. Although the other inmates believe he lost his leg while in combat, he admits to Aleida and Daya that he lost his leg to an infection he got from a cut in a dirty hot tub. He eventually gets Daya pregnant, and he finds out that Daya seduced Mendez to have sex with her so Mendez can be blamed for the pregnancy. During the second season, when Mendez is returned to the prison after his suspension for having sex with Daya, Bennett becomes outraged and uncharacteristically takes out his rage on Vee's gang. He then drags one of Daya's friends to the SHU when she tries to blackmail him. He attempts to continue his relationship with Daya in secret, but she believes that he should confess the relationship and serve time in prison for it, so that they may be together when they both complete their sentences. Regardless, the two share a number of sweet and romantic moments together, despite the situation. Eventually, he confesses to Caputo that he is the father of Daya's child. Caputo, not wanting another scandal two days into his trial period, tells him not to tell anybody else, or he will send Daya to max, where she will have to give birth in shackles. During the third season, Caputo continues to berate him for getting Daya pregnant. Despite this, Bennett proposes to Daya and intends to marry her after she is released. However, he is shaken from his intentions after a visit with Cesar, during which Cesar reveals himself to be abusive and points a gun at his son during dinner. Cesar gives Bennett Daya's childhood crib, but later Bennett ends up abandoning the crib on the side of the road before driving off and moving away. In flashbacks to his deployment in Afghanistan, he befriended Farzad, a member of the Afghan National Police, while filming a parody of Hollaback Girl with his unit to pass time. Later, Farzad discovered that some of his colleagues were about to execute an insider attack on Bennett's unit. He rushed into Bennett's tent to warn him, only to be shot dead by another soldier after yelling "bomb" and being mistaken for an attacker. Following this, the real attackers throw a grenade in Bennett's tent and he is last shown laying in the corner while another soldier jumps on top of the grenade.
Natalie "Fig" Figueroa (played by Alysia Reiner) – The former corrupt executive assistant to the warden. Figueroa claims to be a women's advocate for the prisoners, but is generally unconcerned with them and refuses to get involved in their problems. Arrogant and condescending, she puts on a tough facade to disguise her own insecurities and somewhat fragile personality. Sometimes, she shows odd displays of humanity and sensitivity, usually when the rest of the prison staff are being insufferable. Figueroa tries to avoid any scandals or media attention about goings-on at the prison, and her desire to cover up incidents allows Mendez to get away with his schemes, although it later works in favor of the inmates. She is revealed to have been embezzling funds from the prison's budget for her husband's state senate campaign, a secret which is in danger of being exposed due to the publicity the prison is getting from Larry's articles and radio interview. She spends the second season a step ahead of Larry and a reporter's hunt, focusing on her husband's campaign to become state senator and on getting pregnant. She is shown to be particularly uncaring during the second season, brought on by the stress of keeping the embezzlement under wraps, and her marriage is generally loveless and lacking physical affection. She is devastated and heartbroken when she sees her husband kissing his male campaign manager, and she is taken completely by surprise that her husband is a closet homosexual. Shortly after, Caputo confronts her with evidence of her embezzlement. She performs oral sex on him in an attempt to buy his silence, only to find out afterward that Caputo has already given copies of the evidence to the warden. Figueroa manages to avoid being fired or charged, resigning with a commendation for her services by the warden because he didn't want a scandal from the embezzlement and didn't want to make a political enemy of her husband. During the third season, she helps Caputo by giving him information on a private contractor that would take over the prison when it is being threatened with being closed down. She also begins an affair with him.
Susan Fischer (played by Lauren Lapkus) – A rookie prison guard, Fischer used to bag groceries at a shop that Piper frequented in college, and recalls how Piper used to be a difficult customer. However, she is friendly toward Piper, informing her that she does not think any less of her for being in prison, since the only difference between them is that Fischer didn't get caught making mistakes. Piper appreciates her kind words and convinces her to suggest the reopening of the prison track. She displays a perpetually naive and cheerful demeanor, which endears some (especially Caputo) and irritates others. She struggles to come across as authoritative and strict, and her attempts to appear tough do not appear to intimidate any of the inmates in the slightest, on occasion, they even admonish Susan in return. Caputo seems to have a romantic interest in her, but it is revealed in the first season finale that Susan has a boyfriend. In the second season, Nicky, while having a competition with Boo, begins hitting on her. Susan is initially oblivious, believing Nicky is just being friendly, until she makes her move and directly offers to have sex with her. Caught completely by surprise, she angrily brushes her off. Caputo, meanwhile, tries repeatedly to impress her with things like his hobby of playing in a band, but when he realizes she will never return his feelings, he gives up, and when Susan lashes out at him for enforcing Figueroa's harsh measures, he fires her in frustration. Before she leaves, she finds Nicky smoking in the chapel, but declines to admonish her since she was already fired. Seeing she is upset, Nicky offers her sympathy, and she jokes that she did consider her suggestion to have sex, before ultimately deciding against it. Nicky, in turn, advises her that getting fired may be the best thing that happened to her, since being a prison guard did not suit her. The two part on good terms.
Scott O'Neill (played by Joel Marsh Garland) – An overweight and generally good-natured prison guard in a relationship with Wanda Bell. He is frequently shown eating, despite claiming to be on different fad diets. During the second season finale, he is assigned to watch a group of nuns protesting outside the gate and taunts them with songs and insults about his own unhappy Catholic-school upbringing. In the third season, he gets into a verbal confrontation with Coates in his donuts shop after being offered red velvet donuts. Later, he becomes upset when he sees that Coates is applying to work at the prison.
Wanda Bell (played by Catherine Curtin) – A prison guard, Bell is gruff, apathetic, and has little patience for inmates who waste her time, are unreasonable, or annoy her. Nonetheless, she tends to be the most professional of the guards and takes her work seriously, especially the occasional visits from the Scared Straight program. During these visits, she displays a much deeper insight into individual inmates' histories and personalities than the other guards. For example, she specifically requests Tricia and later Piper to scare an unusually resistant, wheelchair-bound delinquent adolescent, aware that their more philosophical natures will be more effective in reaching the girl.
Joel Luschek (played by Matt Peters) – The sarcastic, uncaring, and barely competent young prison guard who runs the electrical shop. He displays blatant racism, and generally doesn't care what the women in the shop do as long as they leave him alone, though he is good friends with Nicky. His method of teaching repairs tends to consist of handing his inmates a printed manual for the broken appliance and giving them a few minutes to read before sending them off. He buys a new screwdriver and replaces it in the tool crib to cover up his mistake in failing to properly train Janae, thus ending the search for the missing screwdriver, and endangering the prison population by allowing a dangerous object to remain at large. During the second season, he enters a relationship with fellow staff member Fischer, but his nonchalant attitude toward her causes it to end. In the third season, he agrees to help Nicky smuggle heroin out of the prison so he can sell it on the outside. Before he can smuggle it out, Angie and Leanne find it and attempt to keep it for themselves. Luschek finds it on them and threatens to kill them if they tell anybody else about it. During a surprise inspection of his shop, drugs are found under his desk, and to protect himself he blames Nicky, causing her to be transferred to max.
Eliqua Maxwell (played by Lolita Foster) – The first guard Piper meets when she arrives at the prison in the first season. She was on duty as the receptionist for new prisoners turning themselves in. She was one of the COs that subdued Miss Claudette when she was choking Fischer. At the end of the third season, she was one of the guards that walked out on Caputo when he attempted to shut down the guard's union created in response to the benefits that were cut when MCC took over the prison.
Charles Ford (played by Germar Terrell Gardner) – One of the COs at the prison. He was shown escorting Miss Rosa to one of her chemotherapy appointments and he escorted Christopher out of the visitor's room after he began to yell at Lorna during a visit. During the third season, he was one of the COs that confronted Caputo about the reduced benefits and hours the other guards were getting when MCC took over the prison. When Caputo was promoted to replace Pearson when he quit, he was the first CO to walk out when Caputo tried to shut down their union.
Wade Donaldson (played by Brendan Burke) – A somewhat cranky and curmudgeonly guard who is perpetually worn-out by the antics of the inmates that he has to deal with. Nevertheless, he is surprisingly compassionate and good at dealing with difficult situations - on one occasion, he manages to help Daya recover from a panic attack almost immediately after discovering that she is having one, despite Bennett having spent ages trying to calm her. In the third season, he was assigned to help train new guard Baxter Bayley on the job when Pearson orders Caputo to cut their mandatory 40 hours of training short and ends up accidentally being pepper-sprayed when Bayley overreacts to a confrontation between two inmates. Later, he becomes embarrassed at the discovery that he is the basis for one of the characters in Suzanne's erotic tales. At the end of the season, he joins most of the other veteran guards by going on strike when Caputo shuts down the newly organized staff union.
Kowalski (played by Hamilton Clancy) –
Berdie Rogers (played by Marsha Stephanie Blake) – The new prison counselor. She takes a different approach than Healy in counseling troubled inmates and starts a drama class. She tells Alex that she wants to make a difference in the prison system, which Alex considers noble but futile. During drama class, Rogers pairs Alex and Piper together to perform an improv in a grocery store and the scene ends up causing them to release some of their tensions they were holding in. She encourages Suzanne to write stories, which results in her erotic stories circulating around the prison. Caputo finds out about it and puts her on probation. She also helps Brook and encourages her not to take antidepressants that were prescribed to her by Healy. Eventually, she is suspended indefinitely.
Charlie "Donuts" Coates (played by James McMenamin) – One of the new correctional officers hired after MCC lowers the prison's employment standards. Previously working at a donuts store frequented by O'Neill and Bell, he comes to the prison and becomes friends with Tiffany after being introduced to her for a van errand. During one of their errands, he takes her out to feed ducks and ends up treating her like a dog before kissing her against a tree. He stops kissing her after it is apparent she isn't into it and that it was crossing some boundaries. During another van errand, Coates is late returning to the prison and misses count, causing him to be reprimanded by Caputo and put on probation. Tiffany apologizes for making him late, but he throws her into the prison van and rapes her while repeatedly stating that he loves her. Later, he wakes up in the laundry room, after (unknown to him) being drugged by Tiffany and Big Boo. During another van errand, he tells Tiffany to drive under an underpass (presumably to rape her again), but she fakes a seizure and runs off of the road. Tiffany is relieved of her van duties and Coates meets Maritza, who will be Tiffany's replacement as the van driver.
Baxter "Gerber" Bayley (played by Alan Aisenberg) – One of the new COs hired after MCC took over the prison. He is nicknamed "Gerber" by Alex upon first seeing him due to his young age. On one of his first days on the job, he overreacted when two inmates started arguing over an Uno game and pepper-sprayed them. He ends up accidentally spraying himself and Donaldson when Donaldson attempted to stop him. Piper enlists him into her used panty business, using him to sneak underwear out of the prison so that her brother Cal can sell them on the outside. Later on, he decides that he cannot smuggle underwear out of the prison anymore, which causes Piper to assume that he was waiting for an implied sexual favor from her, when it was actually due to stress. Intending to offer Bayley a handjob in exchange for his continued cooperation, Piper is interrupted by Stella, who convinces him to continue smuggling panties out of the prison for the bragging rights on the outside. At the end of the season, he is shown running for help when all of the inmates are leaving the prison to swim in the lake and most of the other guards have left for the strike.
Erin Sikowitz (played by Eden Malyn) – One of the new COs at the prison, she is first seen participating in sexual harassment and self-defense training with the other new hires. Later, when Sophia is attacked in the prison salon, Sikowitz is the first CO on the scene. Due to her inexperience, she flees after telling Sophia that she was going to get Caputo, allowing Sophia's assault to continue. Despite demands from Sophia for Caputo to fire her, her job is spared.
Danny Pearson (played by Mike Birbiglia) – The Director of Human Activities in the prison, which held most of the same responsibilities as the warden before MCC took over the prison. Pearson received the job due to his father's senior position at MCC and as a result had no real experience or qualifications for his job. One of his first acts was to force Caputo to rush the new hires on the job with inadequate training as a cost-saving measure. Later on in the third season, he confronted his father about Sophia's situation after she was attacked and MCC ordered the prison to put her in the SHU due to her threat to sue. Disgusted with the company's actions, he quits his job, and Caputo is promoted into his former position as a result.
Aydin (played by Juri Henley-Cohn) – One of Kubra Balik's enforcers. He is first seen in flashbacks featuring Alex in a nightclub. Later, he is seen killing Fahri, another one of Kubra's employees in his drug cartel, for allowing a professional working for Kubra to get arrested in Paris after failing to pick her up from the airport. Following Alex's return to Litchfield after her parole violation, Aydin applies for a job at Litchfield as a CO in order to get closer to her. Aydin is last seen confronting Alex alone in the prison greenhouse, under orders from Kubra to punish her for her testimony at his trial in Chicago.

Other characters

Polly Harper (played by Maria Dizzia) – Piper's best friend of many years on the outside. Polly and Piper started a business together, which Polly ran while Piper was in prison. Polly is pregnant at the beginning of the series and is upset at Piper for getting herself locked up. She begins cutting Piper out of their business after Piper ignores a conference call they were supposed to make together. Flashbacks reveal that Polly was supportive of Piper exploring her sexuality, but disliked Alex and found Piper's taste in romantic partners of either sex horrendous. After Piper and Larry's break-up, she is seen to spend more and more time with Larry, as her husband Pete leaves her alone with her newborn. She eventually begins an affair with Larry, and she leaves Pete for Larry.
Carol Chapman and Bill Chapman (played by Deborah Rush and Bill Hoag) – Piper's affluent, appearance-conscious parents. Carol, catty and seemingly humorless, doesn't seem as supportive as Piper thinks she should be, and their visitations are usually awkward. She is rather formal and conventional, treating Piper's prison stay as a shame upon the family (and herself). On the other hand, Bill is outwardly supportive of his daughter but causes a rift with Piper when he refuses to visit her in prison, because "he doesn't want to see his daughter that way". In the third season, it is revealed that Bill had an affair with another woman during Piper's childhood, but the family glossed it over and he remained married to Carol.
Howard Bloom and Amy Kanter-Bloom (played by Todd Susman and Kathryn Kates) – Larry's parents. Though he is her lawyer, Larry's dad dislikes Piper and feels that Larry is making a mistake by being with her. They own the home where Larry is living, and let him slide on the rent. Howard wants Larry to find a real job and encourages him to lie to Piper about who really named her in her criminal case. In the second season, Howard advises Piper to tell the truth about the kingpin in her and Alex's case, but she does not heed his advice, and instead lies for Alex.
Jean Baptiste (played by James McDaniel) – Jean originally brought Miss Claudette to the U.S. and set her up at the cleaning company. He later broke her heart by marrying another woman but briefly reconnected with Miss Claudette after his wife's death.
Crystal Burset (played by Tanya Wright) – Sophia's wife Crystal was initially supportive of Sophia's transition, but encouraged her not to have gender confirmation surgery. In any case, Crystal felt it was better that her son have a father who was there for him, even if it was in a dress. She sometimes visits Sophia in prison and updates her on their son. Crystal refuses to smuggle in hormones for Sophia when the prison cuts her dosage. Later on, Crystal becomes close to the new pastor of her church, sparking Sophia's jealousy. Sister Ingalls convinces her that this is about Crystal's needs and not about Sophia or their son, and Sophia eventually gives her blessing for Crystal to act on her interest. During the third season, she agrees to allow Gloria's son to ride with her for their weekly visits with Sophia but she ends this practice after it appears that Gloria's son is a bad influence to her son.
Pete Harper (played by Nick Stevenson) – Polly's Australian husband and a friend of Larry and Piper. A running gag is that most characters dislike him to varying degrees and are confused about why Polly married him. He is seen to be somewhat annoying, selfish, and flighty, especially when he leaves on a trip of self-discovery shortly after his son was born. He also has a macho streak, shown when he punches Larry for having sex with Polly. Soon afterward, he leaves Polly, who states that Pete is happy to be relieved of the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.
Cesar (played by Berto Colon) – Aleida Diaz's boyfriend and a drug dealer. He is shown using Diaz's kitchen to cut/package drugs for sale. It is implied that Aleida is in prison after taking the rap for him, at which point Daya started sleeping with him. Despite this, it is clear he cares deeply for Daya and Aleida. In the first season, after Aleida contacts him about Daya's pregnancy, he immediately comes upstate, turns up unexpectedly at Bennet's house and vets him for fatherhood, warning him that he will need a larger house with more room, and to start saving his money. In the third season, he invites Bennett to his house for dinner and shows that he has a new girlfriend with a baby. He then gives Bennett a crib for his unborn child with Daya, which Bennett ends up abandoning on the side of the road. Several weeks after Bennett disappears, Cesar breaks into his house to look for him and he promises Daya that he will kill him if he ever sees him again. After Daya gives birth, he takes custody of her child, but the child is taken away when the DEA raids his house.
Cal Chapman (played by Michael Chernus) – Piper's younger brother. Their parents long favored the high-achieving Piper and let Cal become a sarcastic, underachieving slacker. Since Piper's incarceration, their parents have begun expecting more of him, much to his dismay. He is friends with Larry, who often visits him at his trailer in the middle of nowhere, which he eventually shares with his hippie girlfriend (and later fiancée) Neri. In the second season, he and Neri marry at his grandmother's funeral. In the third season, Cal agrees to help Piper with her used panty business as her partner on the outside. Later, he admits to her that his wife is trying to make extra money by selling knock-off panties using a solution to simulate the odor along with the ones coming from the prison, which causes Piper to become upset and claim that his wife is "diluting" the brand.
Delia Powell (played by Mary Steenburgen) – Mendez's mother. She comes to the prison at the request of Aleida to discuss Daya's child under the assumption that she is the child's paternal grandmother. She plans to adopt the baby after she is born and mentions that Mendez was the "bad" child, with her other two sons growing up to be a dentist and an art historian. Eventually, Daya tells Delia that Mendez isn't the baby's father, but that she still wants to give the baby up for adoption. Delia tries to tell her son during a prison visit, but he is immediately in denial, refusing to accept the fact that he wasn't the father of Daya's child. Shortly after the baby is born, Aleida calls her and tells her that the baby died during childbirth, although this was a ruse in order to give the baby to Cesar instead.
Kubra Balik (played by Eyas Younis) – Alex's former drug boss. In the second season, he was in Chicago on trial, and despite Alex testifying against him he was set free. After gaining his freedom, it was presumed that he would seek revenge on Alex for her testimony. In the third season, it was shown that he sent Aydin into the prison as a CO in order to punish her.
Fahri (played by Sebastian LaCause) – One of Kubra Balik's employees. Fahri first meets Alex shortly after she meets with her father and he ends up introducing her to Kubra's drug cartel. During the third season, he offers Alex a ride after she attended her mother's funeral, later telling her that Kubra sent him to the U.S. to look for more business. In Paris, Fahri was supposed to pick up a professional at the airport, but Alex convinces him to stay at a nightclub with her instead. Later, he finds out that the professional was arrested and he becomes fearful of Kubra's retaliation for the arrest. While in a hotel room with Alex and Aydin, he is shot to death by Aydin after Aydin received orders from Kubra to kill him from an hotel employee. Kubra later reveals to Alex that he did not kill Fahri solely for his mistake at the airport, which was merely his tipping point, but because he was becoming careless, lazy and a liability.
Vince Muccio (played by John Magaro) – Lorna's penpal and husband. During their first encounter, Lorna confuses details about Vince with some of the other men she was writing, causing an awkward situation before Vince states that he is okay with her writing other men. As the two come closer, Lorna tells him about her former obsession Christopher, causing Vince to take some of his friends to his house to teach him a lesson. Vince comes to the prison intending to break up with Lorna and she proposes in response, which he accepts. The two get married in the prison's visiting center and have sex for the first time on a vending machine while Officer Bell is standing guard in the other room.
Judy King (played by Blair Brown) - A TV personality with a culinary show, her character is loosely based on Martha Stewart.^[4] Judy was shown throughout the third season on trial for tax evasion and was eventually convicted of the charges. Originally opting to go to an alternative prison, she decides to spend her time in prison at Litchfield. At the end of the season, she is shown reporting for her sentence, but she becomes upset after she finds the reception room empty due to most of the guards going on strike prior to her arrival.

Appearances

Actor	Character	Seasons
Actor	Character	Season 1	Season 2	Season 3	Season 4
Main cast
Taylor Schilling	Piper Chapman	Main
Jason Biggs	Larry Bloom	Main
Michael J. Harney	Sam Healy	Main
Michelle Hurst	Miss Claudette Pelage	Main
Kate Mulgrew	Galina "Red" Reznikova	Main
Laura Prepon	Alex Vause	Main	Recurring	Main
Uzo Aduba	Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren	Recurring	Main
Danielle Brooks	Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson	Recurring	Main
Natasha Lyonne	Nicky Nichols	Recurring	Main
Taryn Manning	Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett	Recurring	Main
Selenis Leyva	Gloria Mendoza	Recurring		Main
Adrienne C. Moore	Cindy "Black Cindy" Hayes	Recurring		Main
Dascha Polanco	Dayanara "Daya" Diaz	Recurring		Main
Nick Sandow	Joe Caputo	Recurring		Main
Yael Stone	Lorna Morello	Recurring		Main
Samira Wiley	Poussey Washington	Recurring		Main
Jackie Cruz	Marisol "Flaca" Gonzales	Recurring			Main
Lea DeLaria	Carrie "Big Boo" Black	Recurring			Main
Recurring cast
Madeline Brewer	Tricia Miller	Recurring
Brendan Burke	Wade Donaldson	Recurring
Michael Chernus	Cal Chapman	Recurring
Tracee Chimo	Neri Feldman	Recurring
Berto Colon	Cesar Velazquez	Recurring
Laverne Cox	Sophia Burset	Recurring
Catherine Curtin	Wanda Bell	Recurring
Maria Dizzia	Polly Harper	Recurring
Lolita Foster	Eliqua Maxwell	Recurring
Beth Fowler	Sister Jane Ingalls	Recurring
Annie Golden	Norma Romano	Recurring
Laura Gomez	Blanca Flores	Recurring
Diane Guerrero	Maritza Ramos	Recurring
Vicky Jeudy	Janae Watson	Recurring
Patricia Kalember	Marka Nichols	Guest		Recurring
Julie Lake	Angie Rice	Recurring
Lauren Lapkus	Susan Fischer	Recurring
Joel Marsh Garland	Scott O'Neill	Recurring
Matt McGorry	John Bennett	Recurring
Emma Myles	Leanne Taylor	Recurring
Matt Peters	Joel Luschek	Recurring
Jessica Pimentel	Maria Ruiz	Recurring
Alysia Reiner	Natalie "Fig" Figueroa	Recurring
Elizabeth Rodriguez	Aleida Diaz	Recurring
Barbara Rosenblat	Rosa "Miss Rosa" Cisneros	Recurring		Cameo
Deborah Rush	Carol Chapman	Recurring
Abigail Savage	Gina Murphy	Recurring
Pablo Schreiber	George "Pornstache" Mendez	Recurring		Guest
Constance Shulman	Erica "Yoga" Jones	Recurring
Nick Stevenson	Pete Harper	Recurring
Lori Tan Chinn	Mei Chang	Recurring
Tamara Torres	Weeping Woman	Recurring
Lin Tucci	Anita DeMarco	Recurring
Tanya Wright	Crystal Burset	Recurring
Germar Terrell Gardner	Charles Ford		Recurring
Kimiko Glenn	Brook Soso		Recurring
Ian Paola	Yadriel		Recurring
Lori Petty	Lolly Whitehill		Guest	Recurring
Dale Soules	Frieda Berlin		Recurring
Lorraine Toussaint	Yvonne "Vee" Parker		Recurring
Alan Aisenberg	Baxter "Gerber" Bayley			Recurring
Emily Althaus	Maureen Kukudio			Recurring
Mike Birbiglia	Danny Pearson			Recurring
Marsha Stephanie Blake	Berdie Rogers			Recurring
Blair Brown	Judy King			Recurring
Danielle Herbert	Jeanie "Babs" Babson			Recurring
John Magaro	Vince Muccio			Recurring
James McMenamin	Charlie "Donuts" Coates			Recurring
Ruby Rose	Stella Carlin			Recurring
Mary Steenburgen	Delia Mendez-Powell			Recurring

References

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v t e Orange Is the New Black
Created by: Jenji Kohan
Characters	Piper Chapman Alex Vause Crazy Eyes Nicky Nichols Pennsatucky Lorna Morello Miss Rosa
Related	Episodes Piper Kerman Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison "You've Got Time"