How did a scrappy prison dramedy with an unknown cast become the hottest thing on television? When Orange Is The New Black debuted on Netflix two years ago, it seemed too self-consciously quirky to win a mainstream following. The characters were a rainbow of ethnicities and sexual proclivities – hardly the standard ingredients of a small screen smash. Also, the main protagonist of Piper Chapman – a coddled princess sent down for a drugs offense committed a decade earlier – was straight-up unlikeable. It felt safe to assume Netflix’s odd-ball franchise would find a cult audience – and otherwise intrude on our lives not at all.
Instead, OITNB has blossomed into a full-fledged phenomenon, garnering a fistful of Emmys and handing Netflix one of its biggest hits this side of House Of Cards. In the process it has presented a powerful argument that audiences are more sophisticated than television executives have traditionally believed and that smart, nuanced TV is capable of finding a mass viewership. We are hungry for stories about real people – damaged in- dividuals whose lives are a muddle of regret, hope, despair and optimism. In refusing to soft-peddle its portrayal of women on the brink, OITNB has become a standard bearer for a different sort of “reality” entertainment.
“In a lot of ways Piper was my Trojan Horse,” series creator Jenji Kohan said in 2013, explaining why she had made middle class white woman Piper [Taylor Schilling] the locus of the series. “You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women, and Latina women, and old women and criminals. But if you take this white girl, this sort of fish out of water, and you follow her in, you can then expand your world and tell all of those other stories.
“But it’s a hard sell to just go in and try to sell those stories initially. The girl next door, the cool blonde, is a very easy access point, and it’s relatable for a lot of audiences and a lot of networks looking for a certain demographic. It’s useful.”
Kohan’s talents as a show-runner are on view as never before in season three, which has just arrived on Netflix. Where the second series darkened the tone with an unflinching cancer storyline, this time the mood is notably gentler. A women’s prison drama is always going to have depressive elements – what’s most impressive here is the manner in which Kohan interweaves tears and chuckles. You’ll laugh and maybe later you’ll sober up a little and reflect on the darker truth underlying what you’ve been watching.
“Jenji is the master of taking something and flipping it when you think you have it figured out,” says Uzo Aduba, who plays inmate Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren. “She always has something up her sleeve.
“The tone is lighter than season two. I don’t want to give anything away – what I can say is that Jenji is able to put in nuggets [or darkness] when she needs to. It is funny at times but we never lose that drama. You are always reminded you are in a prison. “
The returning show has given fans an additional reason to celebrate with Laura Prepon reprising her part as Piper’s on/off lover Alex Vause. Rejoining the cast was a dream come true for Prepon, who was required to drop out of most of year two due to scheduling conflicts.
“Alex is back,” she tells Hot Press, a note of triumph in her voice. “You see a different side to her this season – she is broken and vulnerable. She starts in a very dark place. Her arc is incredible. It gets bleak and it was at times uncomfortable for me to play. She grows as it goes along. I’m so proud of everything we have done.”
For all its touchy-feelie elements OITNB can be shockingly explicit – the love scenes between Taylor and Laura, in particular, are full on and definitely not to be watched on your iPad on the bus.
“Sex is like a release from prison and being in this world that’s so bleak,” Prepon said recently. “When they can escape into that, it saves them, particularly in this season. With- out giving too much away, Alex is so mad at [Piper] but wants to fuck her, hurt her. But in that moment she can’t help but love her.”
One of the reason OITNB is able to break rules is because Netflix is not run like a conventional network, Kohan believes.
“I took it to HBO and Showtime and Netflix,” she recalled. “And the greatest thing about going to Netflix was that I pitched it in the room, and they ordered 13 episodes without a pilot. That’s miraculous. That is every showrunner’s dream, to just ‘go to series’ and have that faith put in your work.
“They paid full freight. They were new, they were streamlined, they were lovely, they were enthusiastic about it. And I love being on the new frontier. I love being first out of the gate. It’s really, really fun, because I think it is the future in a lot of ways, of how people consume media, and it’s great to be in there early.”
The willingness to push against convention is most visible in lead character Piper, played with a mercurial twinkle by Schilling. Female protagonists are typically painted in black and white on TV: either they are straight up good or irredeemably horrible. Piper is different – flawed, self-centred, a bit of an anti-hero. We’ve seen many male protagonists fit that archetype. Women, not so much.
“I get this question all the time – ‘How do you feel about people not liking Piper?’” Schilling said in an interview last month. “It blows my mind. The conversation was not about about Tony Soprano or [notorious Breaking Bad anti-hero] Walter White not being likable. But for there to be a girl on television we might not like [is a big deal]. Even fans are going ‘we don’t like you’. It’s fascinating – and it’s wonderful that I am part of the conversation.”
“What’s great about the prison setting,” adds Prepon, ”is that you can tell these amazing stories, can really get inside the heads of the characters. You are seeing them in their darkest moment, behind bars, and there is nothing for them to hide behind. There are highs and lows and we are there with them for all of it. It is an amazing journey – for us all.”