"I do not like where this is headed," Big Boo declares in the trailer for Orange Is the New Black's new season.
“You know the difference between pain and suffering?” responds Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett. “Pain’s always there, but suffering is a choice.”
The fourth series of the hit prison comedy-drama is out now on Netflix and, it seems, it’s darker and funnier.
Danielle Brooks, who plays Taystee, and Adrienne C Moore (Black Cindy) arrive for interview in a New York hotel room a little subdued before launching into a remarkably frank and serious discussion on the show and television’s relationship with race.
Series three of Orange did not reach the heights of its predecessors, swapping strong plots and storylines for a more thematic approach, with a focus on faith and motherhood (and ending in that rather confused extended lake-swimming scene).
As the novelty of the show wears off, the pressure is on for series four. Orange has accumulated a massive fan base, along with critical praise for its sharp, hilarious writing, its deft take on prison life, and its diverse depiction of women of all races, shapes, gender identities and sexualities, built on cracking performances from its ensemble.
A new grassroots civil-rights movement in the US is rooted in reactions to police violence against black people; Brooks says the new series will not ignore that context.
“We are going back down the road of race, and we are tackling it this time, and not being apologetic about it either,” she says. “We are dealing with issues we have here in America . . . when it comes to Black Lives Matter, when it comes to ‘I Can’t Breathe’ – we’re dealing with that, we’re going there.”
For two doubly discriminated-against black female actors, race isn’t just a storyline, but a part of real life.
Unhealed scab
Moore: “I know me being from the South, on a personal level, it hits home in a way that when you grow up around racism, it almost becomes like that scab that’s just always there. It hurts and you notice it, but you’re just so used to it being there that it doesn’t have the shock value as maybe some people who don’t experience it on a daily basis.”
There are finally more black actors getting roles in television. Shonda Rhimes, a behemoth of network TV, has several actors of colour on Grey's Anatomy, now in its 12th season, along with Kerry Washington as the lead in Scandal, and Viola Davis heading up How to Get Away with Murder. (Davis has become the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.) There's Kenya Barris' Black-ish and Fox's Empire, which broke ratings records with its debut series last year.
But while Orange has been lauded for putting black and Latina women on the screen in big numbers, Brooks makes a point about the type of characters that women of colour typically end up playing, even when they do get the gigs.
“I think it’s a tricky thing because, as blessed as we are to have jobs and be on one of the hottest shows here, it’s kind of tricky because we’re still playing inmates. We’re still playing something that is not necessarily perceived as a positive.
“And so, the only difference is that we are still in a show that is allowing us to play characters that are . . . I don’t like the word three-dimensional, because to me it’s like 700 dimensions to who these characters are. Therefore, we have to put that to the side. But I still am experiencing it when I’m being offered roles.
"I'm also doing The Colour Purple right now on Broadway, playing the role of Sofia that Oprah had originated, and I'm still playing someone that's from the 1910s, and was being beaten."
Brooks, she hastens to add, isn’t saying “these stories aren’t valid and important, because they definitely are. But I do look forward to playing roles that I have never seen someone like myself play. Not only for myself, but for that next generation, and not just of black women, but for all different races, and for men as well, that might feel that they are boxed in.”
Moore takes up the point.
"I love Game of Thrones. I love Downton Abbey. I love those type of shows, but you have to wonder: If I could be a part of this show, what type of role would I be forced to sort of play to fit that narrative?'
Boxed in
“I had a colleague who had a chance to study abroad in England,” Moore says, “and I remember her recounting the difficulty. Here, we do Shakespeare and we can play around with the diversity of the characters and so forth . . . You deal with this difficulty in wanting to dream outside of your box, but then getting outside of that box if you’re given that opportunity – then what new box are you being painted in?”
Moore says she wants television to get to a point where a show with a predominantly African-American or Asian-American cast isn’t labelled “a black show, or an Asian show. When are we going to see that ‘mainstream’ has a much larger face or is a much larger picture?”
In another room down the corridor, Lea DeLaria (Big Boo) and Taryn Manning (Pennsatucky) discuss how Orange has changed their lives. The latter is quiet, achingly polite and down to earth. The former is boisterous and showy, cracking gags and following them up with exaggerated chuckles.
“I’m always fond of saying, ‘we had a fisting scene in our pilot’,” DeLaria says of the show’s boundary pushing. “We were already leaps and bounds above whatever anybody else had ever dreamed of doing on any other TV show.
"And that was our first show. You know what I mean? So it's just gone more and more from there. And I think that Jenji [Kohan, creator of Orange and Weeds] delights in pushing the envelope."
I ask her if she thinks fans of the show feel like they have “won” something when they see themselves reflected on screen in a world of TV that is populated by male stories, male leads, male writers and male directors.
“You’re talking about women,” she answers, “especially disenfranchised women, which is basically all women, being able to see real people. I think that’s part of the reason why this show is so popular.”
Manning also plays something of a stereotype, the God-obsessed, rotten-toothed redneck, delivering what is consistently the best performance in Orange.
White trash talent
“Nobody plays white trash like Taryn,” DeLaria jokes. Manning smirks and goes into self- deprecation mode. “You don’t have white trash? Call on me. I’ll be there.”
DeLaria throws her head back. “I love you, girl.”
Manning and other actors would tend to use their days off set to film themselves for auditions for other roles. But during Orange, Manning had soaked up her character so much, she couldn't do it. "For the first time ever, I was like, 'I don't feel like I can switch out of this mind frame'."
Many fans are also somewhat overly invested in characters. DeLaria mentions the particularly hysterical reaction to the show’s central lesbian love story.
“When Alex and Piper broke up, they were like: ‘You’ve ruined my life!’ People don’t ever get to see themselves on television, so no wonder everyone’s tuning in . . . It’s real, it’s honest, it’s them.”
