New interview, stills and BTS pic of ‘Orange Is The New Black’ Season 5

Transcript (by us)

Season 4 was a turning point for Orange Is the New Black. For three seasons, Litchield Penitentiary had existed as its own little universe. Near the end of the fourth season, its world and ours collided with a painful jolt, as one inmate died in a way horribly and deliberately reminiscent of the killing of Eric Garner, a man whose death at the hands of police partly inspired the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of the season sadness had turned to fury and the prison was embroiled in a full-scale riot.
As scenes for Season 5 are shot a t the series’ New York facility, that sense of chaos is still very evident. A shrine to the character who died – who we won’t name for those yet to be devastated – sits quietly amid the mess of rebellion. The riot is not over at the start of  Season 5. The riot is Season 5.
Picking up at the exact moment Season 4 left off, it will take place over just three days, nixing flashbacks that have become series signature.
“We’re experiencing the riot [mostly] in real time”, says Taylor Schilling (Piper). “So there’s less room for character development and more focus on the political [impact], within the prison and outside, of an inmate takeover…It’s very exciting.”
The effect on the cast is palpable. “It’s a thrill! It’s a razor’s edge!” says Kate Mulgrew (Red). “The roles have reversed and the commanding officers have been taken hostage [by the inmates]. There will be a lot of things you won’t expect.”
Politics, though, continues to be as integral as ever. Central to that is the jailing of people for profit. When the season was shot it was assumed Hillary Clinton would become President (Empire is on set two weeks before the election). She campaigned against prison privatisation; Trump took the opposite position. His victory, and the likelihood of increased privatisation, makes Orange’s portrait how wrong it can go even more timely. After a confident leap into real-world politics last season, the show is going deeper. The outside world has leaked into Litchfield, and once inside it’s very hard to break back out.

 

thanks to PiperSchilling for the scans