Kwaku Alston for NetflixDanielle Brooks is putting on her orange jumpsuit for the last time as Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson in the critically acclaimed Netflix series, Orange Is the New Black.
Brooks tells ABC Radio that getting prepared to play her signature character one last time was “easier than usual” but still “challenging.”
“It still is very challenging because of some of the things that I was being asked to do,” Brooks says, referring to the new season. “I didn’t think you could get any darker for Taystee. If you’ve seen the end of season six, we kind of pushed it. But when you see the rest of seven she goes there.”
However, even though Brooks says she felt a new set of responsibilities playing her complicated character, the actress admits she was happy to do it.
“But it’s kind of refreshing because I feel like [the show’s creator] Jenji [Kohan], her writers, have always come from an honest place and I respect that,” she says.
Using Ava DuVernay‘s critically acclaimed series, When They See Us as an example, Brooks likens her character’s struggle to “The Exonerated Five and what they all they went through.”
“It isn’t just one or two huge instances that they went through during their life,” Brooks says, referring to the five men that were wrongfully accused in the Central Park Jogger case. “It’s so many things that take a toll on a person when they go through being accused of something that they didn’t do and here is Taystee the same.”
“So even though I was kind of exhausted by all of the trials and tribulations I was happy that the truth was being shown through the lens of Taystee,” she adds.
Orange Is the New Black, also starring Uzo Aduba and Dascha Polanco is now available on Netflix.
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