Taryn Manning will play a ‘Karen’ who wreaks havoc on Black neighbors in movie directed by Coke Daniels
Taryn Manning is set to bring Karen to film.
The Falls Church, Virginia native, 41, will play an amalgam of the people who have been seen online in viral videos displaying racist and entitled behavior toward others in a new feature film directed by Coke Daniels, TMZ reported on Thursday.
According to Urban Dictionary, Karen is ‘the stereotypical name associated with rude, obnoxious and insufferable middle aged white women. Karens take everything wrong with the typical over entitled Western woman and crank it up by several thousand percent.’
The latest: Taryn Manning, 41, will play an amalgam of the people who have been seen online in viral videos displaying racist and entitled behavior toward others in a new feature film directed by Coke Daniels, TMZ reported on Thursday. She was snapped in LA earlier this year
The film’s storyline will center around a woman who seeks to push her Black neighbors, who are supporters of Black Lives Matter, to move.
Daniels – who has past worked on projects such as Highway and His, Hers & the Truth – said the aim of the project is to shed light on ongoing race relations in the country, according to the outlet.
Manning previously played Tiffany ‘Pennsatucky’ Doggett on the Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, who she described as ‘racist, homophobic’ and ‘horrible’ character in a July 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
She said of the challenge of playing the character: ‘Everything that I’m not is what she was, so it was very tough.’
Out and about: The actress was snapped in LA earlier this year
Manning previously played Tiffany ‘Pennsatucky’ Doggett on Orange Is the New Black
‘I gave myself a lot of pep talks: “Just muscle through this and you’re going to come out the other side,”‘ she said. ‘But if you’re going to do this, do it well.’
Manning said of the challenges of applying method acting and while isolating herself to playing the character.
‘I didn’t make many friends that first season,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t talk to them anyway, she doesn’t like them. ‘As they all got along and had a great time, I was sitting over on the side in character like, “Screw them.”
‘That’s when I realized that I was a little bit more method than I thought. I thought that I could snap in and out, but to go to that dark of a place and to own it, to convince people that this is truly how she is, it had to be fully method. Taryn went bye. It was all this girl that I created.’
The film’s storyline will center around a woman who seeks to push her Black neighbors, who are supporters of Black Lives Matter, to move
The actress, also known for her work in A Lot Like Love, Hustle & Flow and Crossroads, opened up on the learning experiences she gleaned from playing Pennsatucky on the streaming series.
‘I learned so much from that role, it changed my life,’ Manning said. ‘I became very, very religious … and I’ve said “No” to about six roles that I’ve been offered since [that are similar].
‘I definitely need to work, but I can’t continue to play awful people or stereotypes. It just doesn’t resonate with me. I’m a good person and not this horrible person that people want to send me roles for; I don’t want to play it anymore. It’s exhausting and it hurts.’