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Taylor Schilling On Why Her ‘Orange Is The New Black’ Character Is Like ‘Seinfeld’

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 21:13 PST, Jun 19, 2016

Taylor Schilling may look great in an orange jumpsuit, but it doesn’t mean she is not just as sexy without it, according to the Daily Mail. The Orange Is The New Black star posed for the cover of Diva.

In her interview for the cover story of Diva, the only lesbian and bisexual magazine in Europe, Taylor Schilling revealed that she is no different from her Orange Is The New Black character, bisexual prisoner Piper Chapman.

But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean Taylor Schilling has just admitted to drug smuggling (since it’s what her Netflix show’s character is all about), there are other things that the 31-year-old actress has in common with Piper Chapman.

“I’ve never been in jail but I understand someone who discovers that she’s really an outsider and has to figure out her place.”

Taylor Schilling, who turns 32 next month, also revealed what it’s like breaking out of the “gay ghetto” of the TV world. The actress admits that the Netflix series has already become a bigger deal than a mere story about the characters’ sexuality.

In Taylor Schilling’s opinion, it’s more important that the Netflix show’s characters are not only lesbians but also mothers, girlfriends, daughters and working women. And the “real breakthrough” of Orange Is The New Black, according to Schilling, is that viewers have the opportunity to get to know the fully formed characters.

Season 4 of Orange Is The New Black is now available on Netflix, and as promised by the series’ showrunners, it’s focused on showing some of the lesser-known characters. That means that not only Taylor Schilling’s character, but also a variety of other characters of the show will be fully formed in front of the audience.

Taylor Schilling’s character of Orange Is The New Black has a “Seinfeldian” position in Season 4, according to the Toronto Sun. The actress was recently interviewed by the newspaper’s columnist Bill Harris, who called her “Seinfeld.”

But at first Taylor Schilling didn’t get it and asked Harris to explain. And according to the Sun columnist, it’s because her character on Orange Is The New Black started out as the most “normal” one among all other characters but with the passage of time, she turned out to be just as “crazy” as the rest of them.

And Harris compared this Taylor Schilling’s transformation to Jerry Seinfeld’s in his own sitcom. As the time went on, Seinfeld’s character went through the transformation from “normal” to “went nuts.” And Harris saying that seemed to have changed Schilling’s perspective of her Netflix show’s role.

“You have no idea what a big deal it is, what you just said. You have no idea actually what a big deal it is for me.”

But Taylor Schilling doesn’t mind such a comparison. In fact, she surely does appreciate her character’s “Seinfeldian” position in the long run. And what allowed Piper to go from “normal” to “crazy” was the fact that she has always been “in the middle of the swirl,” as explained by Schilling herself.

And even though her character has been getting more and crazy throughout the seasons, Taylor Schilling thinks there’s a “consistency” to her craziness,

“And there’s a consistency also to Seinfeld, so that the others can be a little bit more explosive. I think that’s beautiful.”

And then Taylor Schilling pointed out an interesting tendency: when humans get to know themselves more, they tend to become more “idiosyncratic” and “wild.”

Orange is the New Black Season 4 became available on Netflix on Friday, June 17.

[Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images for Origins]

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