‘Orange Is The New Black’ Season 5 Spoilers: Taylor Schilling Leaks Hints About ‘Politics’ In Series
“Orange Is the New Black” star Taylor Schilling dished out some spoilers for Season 5 of the hit Netflix series while promoting it with CNN Monday. The actress, who plays inmate Piper Chapman, said “politics” takes a major role.
One of the big things that influenced Season 5 was the 2016 presidential election. The streaming network decided to focus on the social issues that arose after the election, which stunned many in the country and arguably throughout the world.
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“Everything takes on more importance,” Schilling said to CNN. “It was a nice confluence of art and life. In our own lives there was a lot of chaos, and in this prison there was a tremendous amount of chaos.”
One of the biggest upsets last season was when Poussey Washington, played by Samira Wiley, died in the cafeteria. It was a play on the 2014 death of 43-year-old Staten Island resident Eric Garner, who died after he tried to say he couldn’t breathe while being apprehended by New York police. Garner was unarmed. His death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.
Season 5 is slated to start with Dayanara Diaz, played by Dascha Polanco, holding a gun on two officers.
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— Orange Is the New... (@OITNB) May 9, 2017
“All of the devastation around that loss was heightened for six months of shooting,” Schilling said about Poussey’s death. “[In] each of those three days, the grief and the fury were at the surface.”
While “OITNB” is touching on politics, it will still remain true to LGBT issues, while also highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement, mental illness and prison reform.
“It's not always that your creative interests and your political interests and activism all kind of meld into one unified gig,” Schilling said. “I think we all kind of felt we have a responsibility right now, we've got to say our peace.”
Wiley, who played Poussey on the hit show for four seasons, opened up about the death of her character and how it pertained to the BLM movement. “It was so amazing to have the support of my entire cast on the day that this had to happen,” Wiley told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “There were faces that I hadn’t seen in a long time and it felt like a real sendoff to have everyone in the same room together. A lot of them were doing their grieving on that day.”
“There are people who are watching television who might not have a personal relationship with Black Lives Matter, but they know Poussey,” Wiley told THR about her character. “What I’ve been reading online from people is just this profound sadness, something that they can’t shake away. And that is exactly what Jenji is wanting people to feel, she wants people to not be able to shake this off.”
Season 5 of “OITNB” is slated to start streaming on Netflix Friday.
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