Pretty was never the point. When Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) entered the Litchfield, Conn., prison we see in “Orange Is the New Black,” the world she knew in Park Slope, Brooklyn, disappeared before her eyes. And ours. She was confronted with communal toilets, where inmates waited on line, rolls of toilet paper in hand, while jailhouse horndog Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne) openly had sex with other women. The hair salon was run by an African-American transgender woman (Laverne Cox), the kitchen by a Russian battle-ax named Red (Kate Mulgrew). Her bunk mate was Claudette (Michelle Hurst), a ferocious Caribbean woman who was a messy killer outside and a neat-freak inside.
So long food co-op, hello Cellblock H.
Created by Jenji Kohan and adapted from the memoir by Piper Kerman, the second season of “Orange” is available for streaming Friday and has already toppled all notions of what a television series about women looks and sounds like. While network shows — with the exception of the Shonda Rhimes productions “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” — have slowly added minority characters, the cast of this series has dozens. Laverne Cox, the actress playing the transgender beautician, Sophia, is transgender herself.
As Piper became changed by this microcosm of female subversion, so too were our notions of what kind of actresses we saw on TV. Makeup is minimal. Wardrobe, too.
This is the “Orange” revolution.
“There are women of all different shapes. Many of the characters are over 40. There are short women, straight, gay, old; everyone is represented here,” says Lorraine Toussaint, who joins the cast this year as Vee, a sinister drug den mother. “Our audience has fallen in love with these women in one way or another and totally identified with certain characters because women get to see themselves. It’s so empowering to see yourself reflected in television shows. That’s what this show is doing. It’s a complete mythbuster.”
One of the myths busted by “Orange” is that female characters have to be a little likable. It goes beyond antiheroes like the bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison of “Homeland” and drug-abusing nurse Jackie Peyton of “Nurse Jackie,” offering characters who have been judged by the state as beyond redemption: They are criminals. Drug mules. Murderers. Thieves. But what should repel us about them is ultimately what draws us to them.
As Rhimes said to Time magazine about Kohan, “She’s turned criminals into women we know, women we care about, women we root for. Just as important, and in a way that is shamefully rare today, Jenji’s characters are a breathtaking riot of color and sexual orientation on-screen. Jenji shows a passion for diversity by creating characters of all backgrounds who are three-dimensional, flawed and sometimes unpleasant, but always human.”
Their humanity would not come through without the cast Kohan has assembled. “I think ‘Orange’ is phenomenal,” says Alexa Fogel, casting director of “The Wire,” which pioneered roles for minority men in the same way “Orange” has for women. “They’re writing about a unique environment that we haven’t seen before and I think that’s part of the reason people are so taken with the show.”
Both HBO and Showtime (where Kohan worked on “Weeds”) turned down “Orange Is the New Black” when she shopped the series to them. Now Netflix, which has renewed “Orange” for a third season before its Season 2 premiere, has the buzziest female-centric show on all of television, with its network confirming that its popularity has surpassed the much starrier “House of Cards.”
“‘Orange Is the New Black’ is like taking the second golden age of television and pushing it further along,” says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media.
The influence of “Orange” will be felt this fall as the broadcast networks add more shows with strong roles for minority actresses. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer stars as a nurse in Fox’s “Red Band Society.” Oscar nominee and two-time Tony winner Viola Davis heads up Rhimes’ “How To Get Away With Murder” on ABC. And we’ll even have a black female president, played by Alfre Woodard (“12 Years a Slave”), in NBC’s “State of Affairs.”
“I think the show will change how women are seen in Hollywood,” says Toussaint. “There’s this myth that female-driven shows can’t be successful or can’t make as much money domestically or abroad [as shows about men], and this show has blown that all out of the water.”