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    31 Things You Probably Didn't Know About "Orange Is The New Black"

    You can't keep everything hidden in the plant pots.

    1. The episode title is stated at some point in every episode.

    2. Jodie Foster directed the first episode of Season 2.

    3. Former Brat Packer Andrew McCarthy directed four episodes in Season 2.

    Here he is behind the scenes with Dascha Polanco (Daya) and Jackie Cruz (Flaca).

    4. And he even gave himself a little cameo.

    I spy with my little eye @AndrewTMcCarthy hiding in one of the #OITNB episodes he directed! Very Hitchcock.

    5. Beth Fowler, who plays Sister Ingalls, didn't need to do much prep to play a nun. She was in Sister Act and Sister Act 2.

    6. Kate Mulgrew (Red) played the mother of Taylor Schilling (Piper) on the TV series Mercy from 2009 to 2010.

    7. The woman seated next to Piper on her flight to Chicago was played by Lori Petty, who was Kit Keller in A League of Their Own.

    She also played Rae in Free Willy and was the eponymous Tank Girl.

    8. Laura Prepon's That '70s Show character Donna totally predicted Alex's Orange Is the New Black fate.

    9. This is the real Alex Vause. Her name is Catherine Cleary Wolters. Notice the glasses.

    10. Real Piper (Piper Kerman) wasn't in jail with Wolters, but she did get flown to Chicago to testify and that is the only time she saw her ex-girlfriend.

    11. Also, Laura Prepon originally auditioned for the role of Piper.

    12. And Uzo Aduba (Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren) originally auditioned for the part of Janae Watson (Vicky Jeudy).

    13. She probably would have been great at the part because she was actually a track star growing up.

    14. The OITNB writers apparently really like this eggplant joke:

    15. Samira Wiley (Poussey) doesn't speak German and spent a lot of time working with a coach and shouting things around her apartment to prepare for her character's flashback scenes.

    16. Franziska, Poussey's German girlfriend, is played by Nina Rausch, who is actually German and also played Gudrun, the Campbells' au pair from Mad Men Season 3.

    17. Orange Is the New Black Season 2 was released the same day as the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars, and the book makes a cameo.

    18. Barbara Rosenblat (Miss Rosa) guest-starred on an episode of Veep.

    19. Matt McGorry (Officer Bennett) is in Shonda Rhimes' new fall drama How to Get Away With Murder on ABC, which stars Viola Davis.

    20. Uzo Aduba and Lea DeLaria (Big Boo) were on Broadway together in 2011 in Prometheus Bound.

    21. Lorraine Toussaint (Vee), Danielle Brooks (Taystee), and Samira Wiley are all Juilliard graduates. The latter two were only a year apart and knew each other in school.

    22. In the book on which the series is based, Kerman talks about the demographics in prison and says there was "one tiny Chinese woman in her sixties."

    23. She has pink hair in real life.

    24. The cigarette lighter Taystee uses would actually create a fire.

    View this video on YouTube

    youtube.com

    25. Brooks and Aduba are really good friends in real life, and both have amazing voices.

    View this video on YouTube

    youtube.com

    26. Not only is Annie Gordon (Norma) not mute, she was in a band called The Shirts.

    View this video on YouTube

    youtube.com

    27. Brooks told BuzzFeed she didn't meet Teeka Duplessis, the actress who played Little Taystee, until after they shot all of her scenes. But the resemblance is uncanny!

    28. And Brooks also told BuzzFeed she actually isn't good at math.

    29. Nor has she read any of the Harry Potter series, and she watched only a few of the movies after Taystee's fandom was written into the script.

    So the Harry Potter references didn't mean much to her:

    30. Black Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore) has a picture of Denzel Washington among her possessions.

    31. OITNB creator Jenji Kohan (left) wrote an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994.

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