Matt McGorry Addresses Orange Is the New Black Haters Head On

He's only an actor, you guys

By Chris Harnick Jun 22, 2015 2:25 PMTags
Orange Is The New Black, Season 3Netflix

Dear Orange Is the New Black fans: Matt McGorry is not John Bennett. Matt McGorry is an actor. Stop hating on him for something his character did.

McGorry, who also stars on ABC's How to Get Away With Murder, took to Instagram to address the hate and difference between real life and television. If you're confused, read on, but fair warning there are Orange Is the New Black spoilers ahead.

In episode two of Orange Is the New Black's third season, McGorry's character got his own flashback. Viewers saw him overseas, dancing to Gwen Stefani, eating ice cream sandwiches—basically everything you'd want to do with Matt McGorry, but he did it in a war zone. The episode also featured Bennett proposing to Daya (Dascha Polanco) and visiting her family outside the prison. But that visit shook him to his core and he skipped town. When the moment came for him to step up, he ran, like he did with the grenade. This is making fans mad.

McGorry posted a photo of himself with Grey's Anatomy's Sarah Drew which got a lot of comments from angry OITNB fans. "I hate this dead beat ass dad I can't believe he already replaced daya smh not happy Father's Day to you piece of s--t!" and "How you gon have sex with daya, propose, tell her you love her, tell her everything will be okay, AND THEN LEAVE! I thought you was a good man but we all thought wrong!" were just a few of the comments.

Many fans also commented that they were joking, but…yeah. Here's McGorry's response:

Happy Fathers Day to all the real fathers out there! I am an actor and I play the fictional character John Bennett on the fictional television show entitled Orange Is The New Black. Here I am with actresses Dascha Polanco and Elizabeth Rodriguez who play make-believe mother-daughter characters named Dayanara and Aleida Diaz on the made up television program with me. They are not mother and Daugther in real life even though they and we play pretend characters that are sometimes even the opposite of who we are as real live people while not reflecting our real lives because it is not real. Moments before this photograph was taken I was even saying words that were written by another person, all the while pretending that my name was John Bennett and that his thoughts and actions were a result of my own brain! Weirdly, the words coming out of my mouth and the things I did in the story were not created by me at all! To make matters even more confusing, I am even dressed in fictional character John Bennett's costume (a costume is like fictional clothes) in this photograph that was taken on the television set and afterwards I went home to my apartment in New York City where I don't have a child because I'm not a father and have never worked in a prison and TV is not real life. #oitnb

A photo posted by Matt McGorry (@mattmcgorry) on

For further explanation of Bennett's actions and exit, check out what McGorry had to say to Vulture: "The flashback is analogous to what ends up actually happening with Bennett and Daya. Here he is, he's in battle, he's talking a big game, but when it comes down to it, the other lower-ranked guy jumps on the grenade as Bennett goes and runs. I think it's sort of who Bennett is: He wants to be the hero so bad, and he tries but falls short. It's pretty tragic, but there is some part of me that thinks Bennett believes he was doing the better thing by leaving. It allows Pornstache's mother to step in, it allows other things to shift. I mean, if you think of it, that relationship has been a ticking time bomb since the beginning."

To summarize: Matt McGorry is an actor, not Daya's lover, not a corrections officer at a women's prison and not deserving of your hate. In fact, he's quite lovable.