Orange Is the New Black helped put Netflix on the map. Now, several of the supporting stars on the trailblazing prison dramedy are looking back on the show’s breakout and continued success to ask why they weren’t fairly compensated.
Their questions, coming as the Jenji Kohan-created series celebrates the 10-year anniversary of its July 11, 2013, premiere, surfaced in a New Yorker story published ahead of SAG-AFTRA announcing an actors strike after the union failed to reach a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) group of studios and streamers. And many of the OITNB castmembers’ woes reflect the issues at heart of the tense negotiations between SAG and the AMPTP.
Ten OITNB recurring stars (some who were later upped to series regulars) — including Kimiko Glenn, Alysia Reiner, Beth Dover, Emma Myles, Diane Guerrero, Taryn Manning and Lea DeLaria — spoke with writer Michael Schulman about being paid the “absolute bare minimum” SAG day rate, which was under $1,000 an episode, at the start of the series. Despite the SAG Award- and Emmy-winning show becoming a success for Netflix globally, many castmembers said they had to keep their day jobs throughout the series’ run. The actors also talk about pay disparity among the non-minority castmembers and the minimal residuals they’ve received since the streaming series wrapped in 2019 (Myles said she made around $20 in residuals from the show this year).
A TikTok from Glenn where she revealed a total of $27.30 in overseas royalties went viral when she resurfaced it amid the writers strike, sparking similar public responses from her co-stars Matt McGorry and Dover. McGorry said he kept his day job for the entire series run and Dover shared, “It actually COST me money to be in season 3 and 4 since I was cast local hire and had to fly myself out.”
“The first thing we say to each other when we see each other, is, like, ‘Yeah, it’s really fucked up — all my residuals are gone!’” shared Myles, who played inmate Leanne Taylor across six of the seven seasons. “When you’re a kid, you have this idea: once I’m on something that people actually see, I’ll be rich, and I’ll have a house that has a bathtub. And you look around after being on a hit show, and you’re, like, Wow, I’m still in the same one-bedroom apartment. Was this how it was supposed to be?”
One star, who remained anonymous, said, “As the seasons progressed, we started to get more disgruntled about money, mostly because of how incredibly popular the show was. And then it felt, like, Well, my friends on network shows are incredibly wealthy.” The series regulars were eventually paid up to $200,000 per episode, while the supporting cast made no more than $15,000, reports the New Yorker. Several who spoke in the piece called out Netflix “telling their shareholders that they’re making more than they’ve ever made” and then-content chief and now co-CEO Sarandos’ rising salary (his pay package hit $50 million last year).
Sarandos, along with much of the OITNB cast, took to social media this week to reflect on the show’s iconic run 10 years after its launch: “It was the first series to openly embrace diversity in every form and tell nuanced stories about a wide range of women from overlooked and marginalized communities that are not typically told in TV,” he wrote in part on Wednesday, thanking Kohan and the “entire OITNB family for a decade of memories.”
OITNB, produced by Lionsgate and distributed by Netflix (neither commented in the New Yorker piece; Netflix and Lionsgate declined comment to THR), was based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name. The series, created by Kohan, who executive produced with writer Tara Herrmann, centered around the Piper character played by Taylor Schilling, who navigates life in Litchfield Penitentiary. The audience’s window into the federal women’s prison was through Piper, a white Brooklynite serving a 15-month sentence for her role in an ex-girlfriend’s (Laura Prepon) drug ring. The inclusive show, which grew into an ensemble series, quickly became a hit, helping to popularize the term “binge” as Netflix continued to make scripted originals after OITNB and House of Cards. The series received Emmy recognition and became Netflix’s most watched original.
As many of the castmembers revealed in The Hollywood Reporter’s OITNB oral history when the show ended in 2019, the then-relatively unknown group had no expectations when they signed on for a series at a company that was then known for red envelope DVD mailers. They described in detail how the show catapulted them into the zeitgeist: “I was with Lea [DeLaria] in New York the day after it came out and it was like The Beatles were walking down the street,” recalled Manning, who was upped to series regular for season four.
Even when the show ended, the creative team was in the dark about viewership numbers as streamers have only recently released select data about their shows’ audiences. “They didn’t tell us a [ratings] number after season one. At Lionsgate, we came up with a verbal scorecard from Netflix, which was ‘amazing,’ ‘really great,’ ‘exceeded expectations’ or ‘we’ll see.’ Orange seemed to be an ‘A’ right out of the gate,” Lionsgate TV chairman Kevin Beggs had shared with THR. “They indicated there was a large percentage of people that watched all 13 episodes from midnight through to the next day and our heads were just spinning on the notion that people would stay up all night and binge the whole season. They didn’t share anything past that in the next year.”
Netflix’s former head of originals Cindy Holland, who with the support of Sarandos handed OITNB a 13-episode, straight-to-series order — which was unheard of for the streamer at the time — confirmed in THR’s oral history, “I said, ‘All you have to know is they were pleased, Jenji.’ … We didn’t know it would become as popular as it has. We knew that we loved it and that there was some audience for it. Then, after season one launched, to see the number of people watching, the speed with which they were watching, the outpouring of support on social media and the fact that it is a show that does travel around the world, we were excited.”
Kohan added at the time, “We’re still not sure what the numbers are! It’s very freeing, but it makes it much harder to negotiate. (Laughs.) So, it’s a double-edge sword.”
It wasn’t until after the show wrapped that Netflix would reveal the staggering figure that 105 million of Netflix’s then-151 million paid subscribers worldwide had watched at least one episode of OITNB. Herrmann shared with the New Yorker that the day after the final season’s release party, she and Kohan were brought into a conference room and were finally told the numbers.
“A hundred million users had seen at least one episode, and I want to say at least half had completed all six seasons,” Herrmann, who said the main cast wasn’t paid on par with that of Game of Thrones or any “big HBO show,” recalled to Schulman. “From an artistic standpoint, those numbers are breathtaking. And, from a business perspective, absolutely staggering. After revealing the numbers, the executive asked us, ‘How does hearing this make you feel?’ Jenji was silent and looks to me, and I said, ‘Like I want to renegotiate my contract.’”
July 13, 5:52 p.m. Updated with note that Netflix and Lionsgate declined comment to THR.
Source: Hollywood
