After spending some time reading scripts and working for a production company, she left entertainment for a stint at ill-fated e-commerce company before becoming Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos’ first hire in L.A. Simpson was fleeing police across town in his Ford Bronco. Holland, who joined Netflix 17 years ago, is a Stanford grad and former competitive water-skier who arrived in Los Angeles from New York in a GMC pickup truck on the same day in 1994 that O.J. Referring reverently to Netflix’s vice president for original content, Mulgrew adds: “But you must have a visionary like Cindy Holland. “Even though they gave me a very slender audition piece, I understood immediately that Netflix was going to do something very bold, and that working in concert with Jenji Kohan, it was going to an absolute horse race in terms of the true advent of the golden age of television.” Nevertheless, 45-year acting vet Kate Mulgrew, who plays Litchfield inmate Red, prophesied the series’ starry destiny. For those uncertain about the show back then, it was Netflix that raised eyebrows.
Kohan’s bona fides as a writer and showrunner were clear, and the stories themselves were a meaty mix of comedy and tragedy that passed the Bechdel test a thousandfold, giving voice to female characters hardly found on TV. It had a real budget and a team that was really into it, so I wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘No one will see it’ or ‘It’ll only be on the web’ or whatever. I had gone through years and years of pilots, and to say, ‘We’re going to support your vision through a whole season’ was an amazing opportunity. “Here was a network that was willing to buy an entire season at once and fund it and support it,” says Kohan.
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Never mind that Netflix wasn’t a traditional TV network: In seeking a home for “Orange,” Kohan remembers loving the streamer’s “all-in” straight-to-series model that bypassed the fatigue of pilot development. With almost every major player in town invested in online originals, all eyes are on what comes next from Netflix as the streaming entertainment market goes into overdrive. The end of “Orange” punctuates the end of an era for the streamer: A question mark has become an exclamation point.
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The show was, in retrospect, not just a signal that a group of diverse women could harness Hollywood clout and acclaim, but a major factor in cementing Netflix’s aggressive originals growth strategy.
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Years later, Kohan’s beloved series is now entering its seventh and final season, and can boast 20 Emmy nominations, four wins and the rare Netflix-provided statistic that around 105 million users have watched at least one episode. “It’s like, ‘Is it a web series? Is it going to be on YouTube? I don’t really get what this is.’ Additionally, the makeup of our show wasn’t something that was all over the television landscape.”
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“When we were making ‘Orange’, it wasn’t like ‘House of Cards’ was actually on television for us to be like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be that,’” says Uzo Aduba, aka Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren on the show. Few guessed the show would become Netflix’s most-watched original series of all time. With no point of reference for what a highly produced online-only TV show would look like, the cast of that series, a diverse group of mostly unknowns, didn’t know whether “ Orange Is the New Black” would become a hit or something that dissolved into the cyber-ether. Now Netflix was challenging network incumbents with its inaugural slate of first-run originals, including “House of Cards,” horror series “Hemlock Grove” and the revival of cult favorite “Arrested Development.” Also in the works was a less high-profile show from “Weeds” creator Jenji Kohan, based on a memoir about a motley collective of women incarcerated in a minimum-security prison. It had recently recovered from the Qwikster debacle - an aborted plan to spin off its DVD-by-mail business - and gritted its teeth through a tomato-pelting over a subscription price hike. Before “ Netflix and chill” entered the cultural lexicon, before the streaming platform won its first Emmy, before it started inking deals with major showrunners, Netflix in the early 2010s was testing out a hypothesis about the public’s appetite for premium-quality television shows on the internet.