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’90s kids, eat your hearts out!

Netflix’s hit series Orange is the New Black features an intense storyline with a whole host of crazy characters, each battling different issues behind bars and in the civilian world.

Amidst the chaos of the opening episode, we are introduced to a calming force known only as Yoga Jones.

Viewers instantly fall in love with Jones, as she brings a sense of calm and peace to the show’s star Taylor Schilling, aka Piper Chapman, who is new to the prison system. 

What you probably don’t know about our beloved Yoga Jones is that before she was playing a hippie behind bars, she was the love interest of one Doug Funnie on the hit ’90s Nickelodeon series Doug!

Exciting, right? We know. And so does Constance Shulman, aka Patti.

“I’m realizing it’s the 23-,24-year-olds who grew up watching that show,” she says in an interview with The Daily Beast about being recognized regularly by her voice. “Because it’s a show about–I’m not even sure how old we were–maybe 12-year-old kids. So I always think it’s 12-year-olds who are still watching, bug I’ll have 25-year-olds come up and go ‘Oh my God!'”

Shulman did the voice of Patti Mayonnaise for nearly an entire decade, first on Nickelodeon, then Disney, and even in the feature-length movie. Patti was a character that viewers could relate to; she was the girl the boys on the show wanted and the girls on the show loved. 

“Doug was somebody you just rooted for, and Patti Mayonnaise was this great tomboy girl,” Shulman says. “She was like a little mentor for young girls.”

Shulman got her start acting in plays like Steel Magnolias and doing small parts in films like Fried Green Tomatoes. In 1996, she landed a small part in a short-lived comedy called The Faculty and then took a break from the acting world to raise her children, now 13 and 16. Orange is the New Black is her first major role in a decade.

“I was a really lucky person,” she says. She had recently reached out to an agent friend to say she was ready to try her hand at acting again when he was handed a casting notice for the part of Yoga Jones, a role that he thought–and we now know–fit Shulman better than anyone!

Shulman is just one of a full cast of colorful characters we’ve come to know and love, and that is what she credits with making the series a hit.

“It’s unusual in the sense that it’s about woman that are all different ages, different sizes, different colors,” she says. “They’re all trying to learn by the mistakes that they made. They have demons and dreams and vulnerable places. They’re trying to cope in an environment that’s very challenging. I think we’re all watching because we’re those people, too. Maybe we didn’t make the mistakes that they did, but we’re all walking on that line.”

It warms our hearts to see that even after all these years, our beloved Patti Mayonnaise is doing just fine! So where would Patti and Doug’s relationship be if the show were still around today?

“I hope that she and Doug would be together,” Shulman says. “And they’d have lots of little salad-dressing kids.”

If only!

SOURCE: Daily Beast: Photo Credit: Netflix