Orange Is The New Black is unlike any other show out there. As well as giving us characters with more layers than a rainbow cake, we get to see all sorts of women of different ages, sexualities and races. Sure, they’re in prison, but the fact that they’ve all got flaws and pasts (you know, like IRL people do) makes them all the more relatable.
Anyway, lead actress Taylor Schilling – who plays Piper Chapman, the middle-class WASP, who ends up in prison for one tiny little thing she did for her druglord then-girlfriend 10 years before – has spoken about how important the different bodies are in the Netflix show.
‘I’m an actor, not a model. I will never compromise myself or my health just to fit into something trendy,’ she told* Glow*, according to* Yahoo News.* ‘We have to realise that all women in all bodies are beautiful.
‘Sometimes the entertainment industry denies reality but, the reality is, when you walk down the street, there are so many different variations of what it means to be a human being and a woman, and I believe they are all OK…’
She also said that* OITNB* can put a lot of its success down to the fact it gives people a reflection of their true selves. She explained: ‘The series has made more space for realistic characters on TV that are based on all kinds of real people, as they’re all valuable and worth having their story told.’
Totally! And just in case you haven’t yet lost an entire weekend watching back-to-back episodes of OITNB, you’ve got until 6 June to cram the first season in, as that’s when Netflix unleashes the second season of the prison drama.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.