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If you’ve been watching the latest season of Orange Is the New Black, chances are you were wondering who plays young Daya in OITNB Season 5. The show dives back into Dayanara Diaz’s past, but the actress playing her, Dascha Polanco, was nowhere in sight. It’s time we took a moment to appreciate Orange Is the New Black’s incredible casting department and this season’s stellar Daya replacement, Dasany Kristal Gonzalez.
Seeing as how Daya is responsible for taking the gun that triggered this season-long riot, it only feels inevitable that the Netflix series would dive even further into her past. In other seasons, Orange Is the New Black has approached Daya’s pre-prison life in the same way it approaches all of its characters — by giving the actress a different hairstyle and turning her loose. However, this season dove into Daya’s teenage years, which is something the 34-year-old Polanco likely couldn’t play convincingly. Consider this your cheat sheet to Daya’s picture-perfect doppelgänger.
Who plays Young Daya on Orange Is The New Black?
Dasany Kristal Gonzalez plays Young Daya on this season of OITNB. Want to know why Gonzalez looks just like Polanco’s character? She’s the actress’ real-world daughter. In the Season 5 episode “Tied to the Tracks,” Gonzalez plays the 14-year-old Daya. Polanco has revealed in interviews that she had her eldest daughter when she was only 18. However, the birth was an emotional one as Gonzales was born prematurely. Polanco has two other children as well, though she’s often private about her family life.
This isn’t the only time OITNB has used a real-life family member
The casting choice is reminiscent of Sophia Burset’s history. Sophia is typically played by trans actress Laverne Cox, but for her scenes depicting Sophia’s pre-prison life as a firefighter, OITNB casted Cox’s real-time twin brother, M. Lamar. All this just proves Orange Is the New Black is all part of one big family.
