Prison Life, Real and Onscreen Aug 4th 2013, 21:01
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Piper Kerman, a memoirist, at the office of the Women's Prison Association in New York.
The night before she reports to prison after pleading guilty to smuggling drug money, Piper Chapman, the protagonist of Netflix's popular series "Orange Is the New Black," frets about maintaining her blond hair and meticulously groomed eyebrows. She anticipates that at least she can use her incarceration to "get ripped," read everything on her Amazon wish list, maybe even learn a craft. She asks her fiancé to keep her Web site updated, and when she walks into the penitentiary, she's carrying a burrata sandwich.
Of course, the story was different for Piper Kerman, whose memoir of the same name inspired the show. The sandwich she brought was foie gras.
"Orange" is the yuppie's view of prison, said Jenji Kohan, who adapted Ms. Kerman's book for TV. Born into a Boston clan of doctors, lawyers and teachers, Ms. Kerman was a rudderless graduate of Smith College who didn't even have a passport when she fell for a charismatic older woman promising excitement, which included transporting drug money overseas.
"It was this huge departure from everything that was expected of me," said Ms. Kerman, now 43. "There's a set of things that nice young women from Seven Sisters schools did, and I wasn't that interested. My path crossed with this person, she made me an offer and I took it, against all sense of self-preservation."
It wasn't until five years later, when her short-lived flirtation with danger had ended, that United States Customs officers arrived at her door in Greenwich Village with a warrant; six more years passed until the kingpin of the drug operation was extradited and Ms. Kerman was sentenced to 15 months at the Federal Correctional Institution for women in Danbury, Conn.
The show does not flinch in its depiction of explicit sexual encounters.
"Very little seems to make Netflix uncomfortable," Ms. Kohan said. And Ms. Kerman is sanguine about scenes that leave little to the imagination.
"C'mon, have you seen 'Weeds'?" she asked, referring to Ms. Kohan's earlier series on cable TV. "If you're familiar with her work, I don't think anyone would be surprised with the provocative nature, in terms of the sexuality. But what is most provocative is the tone, the mixture of serious themes with sharp humor, and doing it with this setting and subject, which is typically so somber."
The rubric "based on a true story" is a malleable designation in film and television. Ms. Kerman is a consultant to the production, but dramatic license is taken with many details about her life as prisoner No. 11187-424. "We check in with Piper on every script about authenticity, but we take a lot of liberties — otherwise we'd all go bananas," Ms. Kohan said.
She did not go far afield in casting an actress with Boston Brahmin deportment.
"I wanted a cool American blonde," said Ms. Kohan, channeling Alfred Hitchcock; Taylor Schilling plays the role with perfect froideur. "But she's also a hot girl who's funny and deep. She's like a unicorn."
The character makes her fiancé promise not to watch "Mad Men" without her; Ms. Kerman asked for no such sacrifice of the man to whom she became engaged. ("Other than sex, I can't think of anything," she said.) The character is a debutante; Ms. Kerman was not.
The series hones the disparity between the lead character and most of her fellow inmates. She swoons on hearing of her fiancé's purchases at Whole Foods, as if the kale and heirloom tomatoes constitute erotica. She notes that prison-issue canvas slippers are not unlike the cult favorite Toms shoes and tries in vain to explain Barneys, the store where the character's "artisanal bath products" are sold, to a corrections officer.
But "Orange" also presents characters almost never portrayed, at least not with much empathy, in Hollywood. The prison population is not a monolith of incorrigible rogues; everyone has a painful back story, and many of them made life-altering choices when they were far too young.
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