Lorna Morello

Lorna Morello
Orange Is the New Black character
Yael Stone as Lorna Morello
First appearance	"I Wasn't Ready" July 11, 2013
Portrayed by	Yael Stone
Information
Family	Stansie Morello (mother) Joe Morello (father) Francine (sister)
Spouse(s)	Vince Muccio
Significant other(s)	Nicky Nichols (ex-lover)

Lorna Morello Muccio is a fictional character from the Netflix dramedy series Orange Is the New Black, played by Yael Stone. The actress originally auditioned for the role of Nicky Nichols in August 2012, but actress Natasha Lyonne was cast instead. Stone was then brought back to try out for Morello and she learned she had won the role two days later. She was initially contracted for one episode, but the producers kept bringing her back. Morello is based on two real-life inmates featured in Piper Kerman's 2010 novel Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison. Morello made her first screen appearance during the premiere episode titled "I Wasn't Ready", which aired on July 11, 2013.

Morello is portrayed as being a positive Italian person, bold, opinionated and "a hopeless romantic". She has a distinctive accent, which is a mix of Brooklyn and Boston. Morello bases her style on actress Natalie Wood. She wears red lipstick, uses instant coffee as brown eye shadow and her vintage-style waves are set with toilet paper curlers. In the beginning of the first season, Morello was in a sexual relationship with Nicky Nichols (Lyonne). She later ended the relationship, as she felt she was betraying her fiancé, Christopher MacLaren (Stephen O'Reilly). Morello's role was increased in the second season, and her backstory was shown in the fourth episode, "A Whole Other Hole". It was revealed that Morello was not really engaged to Christopher, and had in fact stalked and terrorized him after one date. She later took advantage of her job to break into Christopher's house.

The character and Stone's portrayal has received mostly positive attention from television critics. Morello was named one of the more memorable characters on Orange Is the New Black by Laura Bennett for The New Republic. Bennett also said Morello had "the most amazing accent on television". Other critics have said that Stone's turn as Morello was a breakout performance, and that the character became more interesting as a result of the revelations featured in her backstory and the truth about her relationship with Christopher. Kimberly Potts from Yahoo! TV placed Morello's backstory at number one on her list of the ten best backstories featured in the show. However, John Powers from Vogue was one critic who disliked Morello's backstory, calling it a "cliché tale".