Taryn Manning

Words by Susan Cheng & Photos by Catherine Powell

Actress Taryn Manning sits at a table in a shaded area of New York’s High Line park on a September morning. Taryn, who plays Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett, an inmate from the highly acclaimed Netflix show Orange Is The New Black, is a stark contrast from the character fans watch on Jenji Kohan’s series.

In the final few episodes of the first season, Pennsatucky spends every moment of her time terrorizing and provoking the other characters. Taryn’s hair is pulled up in a knot. She is dressed in a pastel pink, patterned top and a pair of matching floral bottoms. Since it is 10 a.m., she has forsaken stylishness for comfort, stowing away her heels and settling for a pair of moccasins. Taryn, who is in town to film the second season of Orange Is The New Black, praises the Netflix series for its sense of realness and vivid characters.

“I think one of the fascinations [people have with the show] is that it’s real. There are women’s prisons and a sense of camaraderie, and so much inner turmoil,” she says describing some of the show’s themes. “Maybe what is so fascinating are all the character studies. I think that’s what makes it so compelling, all the back stories and how everyone’s so different.”

Taryn’s character, Pennsatucky, is a small-town girl and former meth addict in jail for murdering a nurse at an abortion clinic. In one episode, viewers find out Pennsatucky, who had been a regular at the health center, ends up shooting the nurse for making a rude remark about the number of pregnancies Pennsatucky had terminated. At her trial, the addict-turnedkiller finds support from a pro-life Christian community, who misinterpret Pennsatucky’s premeditated murder as an act of martyrdom and heroism. Soon after, the inmate becomes a born-again-Christian and begins preaching her fundamental readings of the Bible to those around her. “She’s such a weirdo,” Taryn says, regarding the outlandish Jesus-loving inmate, who goes to extreme measures to play God to the other inmates.

“I have to totally forget all my worries as Taryn and whatever it is I’m going through, good, bad, whatever,” she says, explaining how she gets in character. “I literally erase them from my mind and just go into a completely ignorant, unapologetic, messed up chick who just doesn’t know who she is but all the while is super clever and resourceful.”

Therein lies perhaps Taryn’s only similarity to Pennsatucky.

It is Taryn’s resourcefulness, talent and refusal to accept defeat that has gotten her to where she is today.

Taryn was born in Falls Church, Va. to musically inclined parents who split when she was only two months old. After her parents divorced, Taryn and her older brother Kellin spent much of her childhood traveling to and from Virginia, where her father lived, and Arizona, where her mother had moved. After relocating again to San Diego, Calif. when she was 12 with her mother, Taryn started dancing, attending ballet and jazz classes every day after school.

Even Kellin, who is now 39, was musically inclined. Growing up, he made tunes on his four-track, and eventually persuaded his sister to provide the vocals to his beats. The siblings released their first successful dance pop album, Boomkatalog One in 2003. Today, when Taryn isn’t acting or belting out soulful lyrics to her brother’s music, she’s DJing and making her own dance and electronic music.

“I grew up with my mom making sure I was practicing my pliés, and my dad was making sure I was singing,” she says. But while Taryn grew up immersed in music, acting was something she found on her own. One day in dance class, she overheard some girls talking about acting classes. Determined to try her hand at performing, she decided to take action. “After a few times of hearing it, I went home to my mom and was like, ‘Mom, Shandra and Ashley take acting classes in Burbank, and I want to go,’” she says. “I just always wanted to try everything.”

The aspiring actress traveled back and forth between her home in San Diego and acting lessons in Burbank, starting from age 13. It was also around this time Taryn lost her father. “It was just the most confusing, weird and surreal experience of my life, the most finite thing I’ve ever had, the loss of a parent forever, you still wrap your head around that, especially when it comes out of left field,” she says. But these obstacles also helped shape her into the enduring actress she is today.

When she was 19, she moved to Hollywood to search and audition for acting roles — at first without an agent. “I was just young and fearless. When you’re 19 and have your eye on the prize, nothing else matters,” Taryn says.

With her mind bent on succeeding, Taryn consulted everything from Backstage West magazines to books from the renowned Samuel French Theatre and Film Bookshop. “I would get [Backstage West] religiously. I think it came out once a week, and I would just scour it and go to these funny auditions for student films,” she recalls. “I started off being an extra, background talent, you know. I mean there’s all different ways people can get started out in acting. I’m really proud to say that I built it from the ground up.”

But starting from the ground up was not always easy. At first, Taryn struggled even to pay rent — $500 a month for a studio apartment in L.A. “I knew I was good at [acting] ‘cause of my classes … but I didn’t have any money so that was another part of trying to make it,” she said. “I play a lot of troubled characters because I can tap into that, but I’m actually a really responsible person. I’m not these characters I play,” she says.

Yet, the actress has an astounding ability to transform into characters like Pennsatucky. Taryn actually helped Jenji Kohan develop her character. “I created her in a sense. I designed her with Jenji,” she said. Despite having a hand in creating Pennsatucky, however, the role did call for some research. It required her to study the Bible, attend church and even look into documentaries on making methamphetamine.

“I have this list right here, and I’ll look at it before I start acting,” she says, revealing a list on her iPhone. “And it’s literally all the ingredients that make up meth. I mean, it’s disgusting,” she says, perusing the list, which contains chemicals such as brake fluid and hydrochloric acid. “So I look at this, and I’m like, ‘Alright. Imagine what this will do to your brain.’”

In addition to Pennsatucky, Taryn has played the pregnant best friend of Britney Spears’ character in the 2002 flick Crossroads, Eminem’s ex-girlfriend in 8 Mile (2002), and a prostitute in her breakthrough movie Hustle and Flow (2005). Taryn attributes her ability to embody a certain role to her own experiences. “I can reach into a well of depth that I have from things that I went through that sucked,” she says.

Despite all that she’s endured, she regrets nothing because she feels she has accomplished what she set out to do. “I grew up so, so poor, which is whatever. I wouldn’t change that for the world,” she says. “I mean, I set out with a dream, and I made it happen. The fame and all that stuff, I was never out for it. I just am happy that I don’t have to be a waitress, and I pay my bills with a dream that came true.”