Just days ahead of the debut of Orange Is the New Black‘s seventh and final season, series star Danielle Brooks is opening up about the Netflix original and the emotional goodbyes she shared when filming came to an end. According to Brooks, she was the last to film before production officially wrapped in February, and parted ways with her longtime co-stars with a special message.
“I was actually the last person to shoot. It was a solo shot. I didn’t even have a castmate to share it with,” Brooks told BuzzFeed News, adding that before that scene was filmed, she had penned a song to share with her castmates that saw the set become “a lake full of tears” when she sang it.
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Brooks, who has portrayed beloved character Taystee since the series’ inception, went on to praise Orange Is the New Black for bringing important issues to the forefront of conversations. Based on Piper Kerman’s memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison and initially debuting in 2013, the series has touched on a range of topics, including the judicial system, and, most recently, ICE.
“It reminds me of the importance of what we do and how far that can move and shake our world,” she said. “That’s what I have enjoyed about being in this show. I feel like not only in the prison industry but all of these other very important topics like ICE, LGBT, sizeism, to whatever it is…we’ve been able to hit on all of it and been able to use our voices as activists.”
She also teased a little of what’s to come for her character, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in the Season 6 finale for a crime that she did not commit.
“She’s been through so much trauma,” Brooks said. “It’s crazy to see somebody who started out with such a lighthearted spirit be taken through this terrain, through so much, and even in Season 7…I didn’t even think they could go any further than what they did, and they did!”
“But you see that she just had faith the size of a mustard seed and it carried her through,” she added.
Set to debut this Friday, Season 7 will see “the ladies of Litchfield come to terms with the fact that prison has changed them forever,” with Piper struggling to adjust to life outside of prison following her early release and those still behind bars dealing with the daily struggles of imprisonment.
Seasons 1-6 of Orange Is the New Black are currently available for streaming on Netflix. Season 7 is set to premiere on Friday, July 26.
