who plays the blonde in orange is the new black
List of Orange Is the New Black characters 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 first season 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 fiancÃ© 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. She becomes enemies with Tiffany after she ridiculed her religious beliefs, and ended up beating her severely after a failed attempt on her life at the end of the first season, knocking out all of her teeth.