Lorraine Toussaint, who plays the manipulative Vee on Season 2 of Netflix’s women’s prison drama, talks about stepping into the role of Litchfield’s most dangerous disruptor. In other words: You don’t know Vee. (Warning: SPOILERS for Season 2 ahead.)
Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba) and Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) sit together in the cafeteria. Netflix.
"Bless her heart, she's just misunderstood," Lorraine Toussaint said facetiously when describing her Orange Is the New Black character, Vee Parker, a violent sociopath disguised as a drug dealer. "That was my running joke about Vee when people would try to label her. I stood very firmly on Oh, she's just really misunderstood. Yeah, she's missing a few critical components."
Vee, a new addition to Litchfield Penitentiary on the second season of Jenji Kohan's hit drama, immediately began terrorizing the inmates and disrupting the order even before she received her orange scrubs. The controlling, manipulative, and downright evil character spent Season 2 taking advantage of Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren (Uzo Aduba), alienating Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley), and competing with Galina "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew) in an attempt to gain the keys to the wire-encased cement block castle.
"She's just really quite dreadful," Toussaint said about Vee. "It was interesting, really interesting, living in her skin for the period in which I did, and I'm glad to be back to myself."
Toussaint is the antithesis of Vee, or her "shadow self," as she called her. "I gave my shadow self keys to the car for six months and I don't usually let her drive; no one should let our shadow selves drive the car all the time, but we certainly should be aware of the shadow self within us," Toussaint said. In fact, when Toussaint answered the phone the Monday after her successful Orange Is the New Black season launched, she was making tea ("I can't start my day without it," she said) and describing how she unwinds from such an intense character with meditation. It is a far cry from her malevolent alter ego on the Netflix series.
