Season Four of multi-award-winning women's-prison comedy-drama Orange is the New Black lands on Netflix on June 17, perfectly timed for summer binge-viewing.
We caught up with two of the stars – Kate Mulgrew and Lea DeLaria – to find out what we can expect this year, following the multiple cliffhangers that left viewers dangling at the end of season three.
“We’ve learnt to go with our writers as they’re possibly the best writers in Hollywood and I’ll mud wrestle anyone that says they’re not,” says DeLaria, who plays Carrie “Big Boo” Black. “When they told us season four was going to be done entirely with puppets, I thought it was weird, but you’ll like it, ” she jokes.
We are fairly sure she is joking, to make up for the fact that the cast is sworn to secrecy and so can’t go into too much detail about upcoming plot lines.
"We can't talk too much – we had to sign this thing," says Mulgrew, who before taking the role of Galina "Red" Reznikov was best known for her seven-season stint as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.
“But what I can say is it’s very, very dark. They go very deep. There are a lot of laughs – but you’d better buckle your seat belts because there are some very interesting turns. It examines the prison system in a way I don’t think it’s ever been examined before in our culture.
“I think you’ll be very surprised and wholeheartedly engaged. You’ll be riveted.”
While DeLaria, 58, can’t go into the details of what’s in store for her character this season, she says that she is pleased with the way Big Boo has evolved.
“Each season she’s got meatier and meatier and each season they explore more and more of what makes Boo tick and that will carry on,” she says. “It’s a pleasure to have the writers write like that for you. I never feel that she’s two-dimensional, I really feel like she’s real – all the characters, it’s like everybody’s real.”
Mulgrew, 61, is equally pleased with the way Red has developed.
“I love my character,” she says. “The dimension has grown and grown. This happens only a handful of times in a career – and I’ve been acting for 42 years.
“It’s really an amazing time to be a woman in Hollywood. I came up very much in the ‘boys’ club’, where you couldn’t get in the door. I always got good parts but I thought with Captain Janeway we were going to break this thing – but I was never anything like an equal to [the original Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, William] Shatner.
“Now I feel the playing field is being levelled because of this show and this woman [writer and creator Jenji Kohan]. To be selected to be in that Petri dish that she has designed is a real honour.”
Mulgrew’s admiration for Kohan doesn’t stop at her work in breaking down Hollywood’s gender barriers.
“Jenji Kohan is a genius and we have to meet her expectations,” she says. “The bar is set very high. When I walk on set I feel that I have to be completely prepared and completely present –and then we laugh when the takes are good. When you have two or three in the can, then you can relax a little bit.”
Mulgrew’s Red has been a major figure from the beginning of Orange is the New Black, which ebuted on Netflix in 2013, and the actress says she knew the show was something special from the very start.
“It’s hard to know that you’re part of a phenomenon when you’re in the middle of it, but did I sense it? Yes,” she says. “After 42 years in this business I knew this was highly unconventional and I knew it was great.
“I just felt if Jenji could hold onto the reins, we had a shot at something remarkable and that’s exactly what’s happening.
“The boys club had strict rules and it was all about the boys and power and money. Netflix has transcended that and I’m so happy to be a part of that. It’s come at a time in my career when I can really appreciate it.”
DeLaria, whose character has grown from a more peripheral presence in the earlier seasons, says she, too. knew, that there was something unique about the Orange is the New Black phenomena from the very beginning.
“It was interesting when we started because no one had ever seen anything like it, with all the episodes dropping at same time,” she says.
“It wasn’t even 24 hours after season one had dropped on Netflix when I popped out to the hardware store and a woman came running up to me screaming ‘Big Boo, Big Boo, would you sign my screwdriver?’ It had only been on for like a day, but I guess that’s the result of binge watching.”
Following critical acclaim, audience approval and Emmy and Golden Globe awards and nominations by the sackful, the show has already been renewed up to season seven, so there is plenty of drama, laughs and plot twists to come.
DeLaria has one idea she’d like to see in a future episode.
“We have a lot of Broadway performers on the cast,” she says. “Almost all of us have some experience on Broadway, so I’m hoping Jenji will do just one musical episode. Just one – wouldn’t that be fun?
“The ones that can’t sing, well, they can dance. They’ll be fine, they’ll just have to dance. How great would that be?”
