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" Danielle Brooks can no longer go out in her pajamas. &amp;quot;Or you can,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but they&amp;#039;re going to talk about you on the blogs.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s been less than a year since the premiere of Orange Is the New Black, and thanks to her breakout role as Tasha &amp;quot;Taystee&amp;quot; Jefferson, an inmate at Litchfield Penitentiary, Brooks&amp;#039;s life has changed dramatically. Sometimes her fans are cool and just ask for a picture. Sometimes they try to sneak it. And sometimes they get a littleoverexcited. &amp;quot;This woman, I&amp;#039;m sitting there, and she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;You Taystee?&amp;#039; She pulls me to her. She&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;You live in Harlem?&amp;#039; People come into your space. It almost gave me a heart attack. This woman came up to me \u2014 it&amp;#039;s raining outside \u2014 and she&amp;#039;s hyperventilating. I&amp;#039;m like, Oh, my god, she&amp;#039;s freaking out because of me? I&amp;#039;m still Dani.&amp;quot; Brooks, 24, had a recurring role on season one, but she proved so popular that she was promoted to a series regular for season two. Though she admits all the attention can get overwhelming, she&amp;#039;s careful to note how grateful she is for her recent good fortune. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t know where all of this was going to go,&amp;quot; she says over lunch at a New York diner. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s definitely been a shock. I was a little hesitant about the role, because all I knew was I&amp;#039;d be an inmate, but boy, am I glad that I did not turn that down. I&amp;#039;d be devastated. You only have maybe two or three roles like this in your lifetime.&amp;quot; When Brooks shot her first scene in Orange the day after her 22nd birthday, she couldn&amp;#039;t have predicted the way the show \u2014 and her career \u2014 would take off. The Scandal fan definitely didn&amp;#039;t expect to meet Kerry Washington in L.A. when she flew out for the 2013 Emmys. &amp;quot;The first thing she said to me was, &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;re just beautiful.&amp;#039; Inside I was like, &amp;#039;What is happening?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Brooks made her acting debut in a church play at age 6, and after that, she performed in every show she could as a child, &amp;quot;which is limited,&amp;quot; she says, in Greenfield, S.C. After attending South Carolina Governor&amp;#039;s School for the Arts &amp;amp;amp; Humanities for high school \u2014 &amp;quot;like a mini-Juilliard&amp;quot; \u2014 she enrolled in the real Juilliard&amp;#039;s drama program in New York. &amp;quot;She was so ready to play,&amp;quot; one of her teachers, Christopher Bayes, says. &amp;quot;She has this crazy charisma. She&amp;#039;s always like, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s do the work, but let&amp;#039;s have some fun doing it.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; That quality helped her land the role of Taystee not long after graduation. She had received only one scene from her agent \u2014 a shower scene with a new white inmate \u2014 and she worried about stereotypes on a show about women behind bars. Still, she showed up to the audition with braided hair, no makeup, and a muumuu, and luckily, the casting director gave her a tip. &amp;quot;[She] said, &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t play her mean \u2014 she&amp;#039;s lighthearted,&amp;quot; Brooks says. &amp;quot;I thought, This is me, just in prison.&amp;quot; Jenji Kohan, the show&amp;#039;s creator, says she found the actress delightful. &amp;quot;Singing in the shower naked is a lot to ask of a young girl from a religious background,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;This character has such a fucked-up backstory, but there was this light that shines through her.&amp;quot; In what is otherwise a rather dark show, Taystee breaks into dance, freestyle-raps, and jokes with her best friend, Poussey (Samira Wiley), about how white people talk. Even the story she tells in an AA meeting in season one is funny. (&amp;quot;So I&amp;#039;m sitting there, barbecue sauce on my titties, and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;What the fuck? Again?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;) Taylor Schilling, who plays the lead role of Piper, says Brooks brings this same upbeat attitude to the set and to the cast&amp;#039;s many get-togethers. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s always got some fabulous outfit on,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s always got music playing. If there&amp;#039;s something to run lines for, she&amp;#039;ll run lines. Before I went to the Golden Globes, she arranged a dinner with all the cast.&amp;quot; In December Brooks taped a &amp;quot;Jolly Christmas Medley&amp;quot; with her co-star Uzo Aduba, dancing and singing to the music of the Brooklyn band Oh Honey, and it went viral. A month later, she appeared on Girls in a much-anticipated guest role \u2014 as many articles pointed out, she would be the first black woman on the show. &amp;quot;It made me nervous that it was blown up so big,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t want people to be disappointed.&amp;quot; Brooks was in only one episode, but as Laura, a closeted lesbian, she had a scene racier than anything she had done on Orange \u2014 Jessa (Jemima Kirke) goes down on her character in rehab. &amp;quot;No underwear,&amp;quot; Brooks says. &amp;quot;They put a sticky from the front to the back.&amp;quot; She acknowledges that these roles are not what you might expect from a girl who used to spend Wednesdays at Bible study. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not that I don&amp;#039;t want to do stories that my children can watch. I do want to do that,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But it is fun to play characters like Taystee and Laura, characters who are so far from me. I like to give voice to people who don&amp;#039;t have one.&amp;quot; In addition to watching a lot of prison shows and reading the book on which the Netflix series was based to prep for the part, Brooks has worked with the Women&amp;#039;s Prison Association and has gradually gotten to understand her character better. &amp;quot;A lot of people ask me, &amp;#039;Do you think it&amp;#039;s better off that Taystee is in prison?&amp;#039; She&amp;#039;s not better off there. She just doesn&amp;#039;t know how to navigate the outside world,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s figured out how to make this place work for her, and I think that&amp;#039;s the reality for a lot of women.&amp;quot; Orange returns on June 6, and Brooks says the show has opened up better acting opportunities in addition to the part on Girls. For her first role in a feature film, an indie called I Dream Too Much, which she shot earlier this year, she didn&amp;#039;t even have to audition. Brooks says she&amp;#039;s happy the people who knew her before all this craziness \u2014 her parents and her extended &amp;quot;church family&amp;quot; \u2014 have been so supportive. &amp;quot;They do watch my shows,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Though I think they fast-forward some parts.&amp;quot; RELATED:  The First Look at Orange Is the New Black Season 2 Is Here! Orange Is the New Black Gets a Third Season Follow Jennifer on Twitter. Photo credit: Jeremy Pope "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a6790/danielle-brooks-orange-is-the-new-black/>