Orange Is the New Black, created by Jenji Kohan, was one of the first Netflix original TV series to achieve great success. The dramedy was inspired by the true story of Piper Kerman, who was sentenced in 2004 to spend 15 months in a Danbury penitentiary for money laundering. Starting from her memories, Jenji Kohan has developed a bittersweet story that recounted everyday life in US prisons and the abuses of the prison police. Orange Is the New Black it went on for seven seasons, managing to win the hearts of viewers and get good reviews from critics. Over the years he has also received several nominations at the most important awards dedicated to the small screen, managing to win four Critics’ Choice Television Awards and two Emmy Awards. The TV series made the careers of several stars such as Laura Prepon and Natasha Lyonne take off. However, according to recent reports, some of the actors, who played secondary characters, did not get much from the success of the TV series.
Some stars of the cast of Orange Is the New Black confessed to receiving very low pay for their work on the show.
The actors’ strike, which was called by the US union SAG-AFTRA, is bringing to light different narratives about the compensation that the stars would have obtained over the years from their successful products. Would be it has emerged that the studios pocket most of the earnings, while in many cases the writers and actors would not get earnings in proportion to the popularity of their shows. This is one of the reasons that prompted SAG-AFTRA to start the protest that threatens to paralyze Hollywood. To support the union’s claims, the actress Kimiko Glenn reposted an old video showing how she only earned $27.30 for appearing in 45 episodes of Orange Is the New Black. In the comments to his Instagram post, several colleagues commented, recalling how they were forced to do double duty at the time because Netflix wasn’t paying them enough to star in the show. Matt McGorry, who played correctional officer John Bennett, wrote for example:
“I kept my side job the entire time I was on the show because it paid better than the hugely successful TV show we were a part of (and I know many of us kept our jobs)”
Also commented Beth Doverwho recalled how she was forced to pay all the travel expenses he had to go through to be part of the series out of his own pocket. You also repeated in a report conducted by New Yorker that the cast”it was not fairly paid” and that Netflix justified the starvation wages of the actors by referring to financial constraints. Actually the streaming giant resorted to a petty ploy, attributing to these actors the title of “recurring guest stars”, in order to be able to pay them less of the main stars. Emma Mylewho played Amish addict Leanne Taylor for six seasons, added:
“They could and would pay us the bare minimumand there was really no room for manoeuvre”.