[The innovative and daring show was a worldwide hit for Netflix,
but some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated. ]
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“ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK” SIGNALLED THE ROT INSIDE THE STREAMING
ECONOMY  
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Michael Schulman
July 12, 2023
The New Yorker
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_ The innovative and daring show was a worldwide hit for Netflix, but
some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated. _

Some cast members, including Kimiko Glenn, are proud to have been on
“Orange Is the New Black,” but feel shortchanged out of the wealth
that it created.,

 

 December, 2020, in the depths of pandemic winter, the actress Kimiko
Glenn got a foreign-royalty statement in the mail from the screen
actors’ union, _sag-aftra_. Glenn is best known for playing the
motormouthed, idealistic inmate Brook Soso on the women’s-prison
series “Orange Is the New Black,” which ran from 2013 to 2019, on
Netflix. The orchid-pink paper listed episodes of the show that
she’d appeared on (“A Whole Other Hole,” “Trust No Bitch”)
alongside tiny amounts of income (four cents, two cents) culled from
overseas levies—a thin slice of pie from the show that had thrust
her to prominence. “I was, like, Oh, my God, it’s just
so _sad_,” Glenn recalled. With many television and movie sets
shuttered, she was supporting herself with voice-over jobs, and
she’d been messing around with TikTok. She posted a video
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which she scans the statement—“I’m about to be
so _riiich_!”—then reaches the grand total of twenty-seven
dollars and thirty cents and shrieks, “WHAT?”

The post got more than four hundred thousand likes and nearly two
thousand comments, many from disbelieving fans: “Wait how is that
even legal??” “how is this even real you were on one of the
biggest netflix shows.” This past May, with screenwriters on strike
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labor unrest sweeping Hollywood, Glenn reposted the video on
Instagram, where she has almost a million followers. This time, not
only fans but castmates weighed in. Matt McGorry, who played a
corrections officer: “Exaccctttlllyyy. I kept my day job the entire
time I was on the show because it paid better than the mega-hit TV
show we were on.” Beth Dover, who played a manager at the company
taking over the prison: “It actually COST me money to be in season 3
and 4 since I was cast local hire and had to fly myself out, etc. But
I was so excited for the opportunity to be on a show I loved so I took
the hit. Its maddening.”

When “Orange” premièred, ten years ago this week, it broke ground
in multiple ways. Created by Jenji Kohan
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based on Piper Kerman’s memoir
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the show was ribald, off-kilter, playfully knowing about female
sexuality, and sharp-eyed about the prison-industrial complex.
Although it centered on Piper (Taylor Schilling), a sheltered, blond
yuppie adjusting to life in minimum-security lockup, its selling point
was the huge, multiracial, largely female ensemble, which, as _The
New Yorker’s_ Emily Nussbaum observed
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time, represented a “truly impressive array of prisoners, played by
actresses of varying ages and appearances, including types rarely
shown on TV.” The series was also a breakthrough for Netflix as it
was transitioning from a DVD-rental-by-mail service to a streaming
company with its own content; “Orange” arrived just a few months
after “House of Cards
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With “Orange,” Nussbaum noted, Netflix was “quickly establishing
itself as a real rival to cable.” The shift came with a new viewing
pattern: binge-watching, in which an entire season could be consumed
at once. “House of Cards,” anchored by the star power of Kevin
Spacey and Robin Wright, brought the company instant prestige. But
“Orange” was a ground-up phenomenon, with a fervid fan base that
would binge, binge, and binge again. The show’s runaway success was
a cornerstone that helped build the Netflix brand, which in turn built
the streaming economy, which has now taken over pretty much the entire
industry.

A decade on, however, some of the cast feel disillusioned about how
they were compensated, both during the original run and in the years
since. Television actors have traditionally had a base of income from
residuals, which come from reruns and other forms of reuse of the
shows in which they’ve appeared. At the highest end, residuals can
yield a fortune; reportedly, the cast of “Friends” has each made
tens of millions of dollars from syndication. But streaming has
scrambled that model, endangering the ability of working actors to
make a living. “So many of my friends who have nearly a million
followers, who are doing billion-dollar franchises, don’t know how
to make rent,” Glenn told me. That struggle has brought _sag_ to
the precipice of a potential strike, authorized by more than
ninety-seven per cent of about sixty-five thousand voting members.
(The negotiation deadline, after an eleventh-hour extension, is
tonight.) In certain ways, “Orange” was an early indicator of how
lopsided the streaming economy would be, and a number of cast members
are now conflicted: they’re proud to have been on such a
progressive, influential show, but feel shortchanged out of the wealth
that it created. “We all took a risk together,” Alysia Reiner, who
played the corrupt warden Natalie (Fig) Figueroa, said. “And the
reward for Netflix does not seem in line with the reward for all of us
who took that risk. I can go anywhere in the world and I’m
recognized, and I’m so deeply grateful for that recognition. Many
people say they’ve watched the series multiple times, and they quote
me my lines. But was I paid in a commensurate way? I don’t think
so.”

I spoke to ten actors from the show, many of whom spent several
seasons as “recurring guest stars,” meaning that they had
substantial roles over numerous episodes but weren’t part of the
core group categorized—and compensated—as series regulars.
(According to _TV Guide_
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Schilling was paid thirty-five thousand dollars per episode in
2014—far more than a day player, far less than Téa Leoni’s
hundred and twenty-five thousand for “Madam Secretary,” on CBS.)
“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!’ ” Emma Myles, who spent six seasons playing Leanne Taylor,
an ex-Amish meth addict, told me. “It’s always the first thing to
come out of our mouths, because it’s so crazy and unjust. And
everyone thinks we’re kajillionaires.” When Myles was cast, for
the first season, she was having a rough time (astrologically
speaking, she called it a Saturn return from hell): she’d lost a
restaurant job, then was displaced by a house fire, _then_ moved
into a new apartment that had bedbugs. She was about to give up on New
York when she got a three-episode offer for “Orange.” “I would
explain to people, ‘Yeah, it’s for Netflix,’ and they were,
like, ‘Oh, with the envelopes? That’s cute.’ ”

“Orange” was distributed by Netflix but produced by Lionsgate,
which determined the cast’s up-front payments. Myles was paid
scale, _sag_’s minimum rate, which was under nine hundred dollars
per day. “They could and would pay us the absolute bare minimum, and
there was really no wiggle room,” she recalled. Her contract was
appended with _sag_’s 2012 New Media Agreement, which covered
projects “produced for initial exhibition via the Internet, mobile
devices, or any other platform known or which hereafter may be
adopted” (now known as half of TV). _sag_ had originally codified
the agreement in 2009, after a yearlong standoff with the studios. At
the time, streaming TV was mostly theoretical, except for the
under-five-minute “Webisodes” that “Lost” ran on abc.com. The
contractual terms were—and remain—much worse for actors than those
of “linear” TV. (This is a major source of contention in the
actors’ current standoff with the studios.) Traditional broadcast
series pay residuals for each re-airing, calculated as a percentage of
the actor’s salary. The 2012 New Media Agreement entitled Myles to
residuals only after the first fifty-two weeks the show was on the
platform; the amount was based not on how many times each episode was
watched but on a percentage of the licensing fee that Netflix paid
Lionsgate to distribute the show. (If this sounds confusing, don’t
worry—the actors also find it baffling.) Myles still gets around six
hundred dollars a year for a handful of guest spots on “Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit,” stretching back to 2004, but her residuals
this year for “Orange” have come to around twenty bucks.

Netflix didn’t share its viewership numbers (and still mostly
doesn’t), making it harder for the actors to negotiate higher
salaries. But the “Orange” cast could tell that the show was a
megahit from their overnight fame. “We knew that it was insanely
popular,” Myles said. “We’d walk out of our houses in whatever
neighborhood we were living in, and people were going crazy.” The
comedian Lea DeLaria, who played the lovable bull dyke Big Boo,
recalled getting swarmed by a group of screaming teen-agers. “My
girlfriend at the time said, ‘Lea, you’re a Jonas brother!’ ”

The fame could be destabilizing; Glenn said that she developed a
“panic disorder.” One day, during a yoga class, she recalled, “I
was coming out of Savasana, and, when I opened my eyes, there’s a
face right in front of me, like, ‘Hi, can I get a picture with
you?’ ” On the train, she’d get swarmed by “Orange” fans
and worried for her safety. “I would get grabbed,” she recalled.
When she joined the cast, in Season 2, Glenn was living in subsidized
housing in Flatiron. Because the show didn’t pay for her
transportation unless her call time was before 6 _a.m._, she either
had to take the subway to the studio in Astoria or pay for a taxi
herself. “The cab rides wouldn’t have been such a big thing if we
were paid enough that it didn’t feel like we were spending our
paychecks on it.”

Despite the Beatlemania-like fame, many cast members had to keep their
day jobs for multiple seasons. They were waiting tables, bartending.
DeLaria continued doing live gigs to keep up with her rent. Diane
Guerrero, who played the fashionable inmate Maritza Ramos, worked at a
bar, where patrons would recognize her. “How could you tell this
complete stranger how much you’re getting paid for being on a
television show?” she asked. “Because everyone’s reaction would
be, like, ‘Oh, my God, I love you on that show! But also, what are
you doing here?’ It was this incredulity that was teetering on
offensive.” Myles was working in a basement for a financial firm,
acting in live simulations for aspiring financial planners. One day,
one of the candidates paused on the phone and said, “You sound
exactly like the Amish meth head on ‘Orange Is the New Black.’ Has
anyone ever told you that?”

For a while, there _were_ more substantial residuals—only because
Netflix didn’t cover every territory on the planet, and Lionsgate
could resell the rights to cable channels overseas. All that dried up
as Netflix went global and the show aged, and the residuals slowed to
a trickle. “As the seasons progressed, we started to get more
disgruntled about money, mostly because of how incredibly popular the
show was,” one actor told me. “And then it felt, like, Well, my
friends on network shows are incredibly wealthy.” The series
regulars were eventually paid up to two hundred thousand dollars per
episode, while the supporting cast made no more than fifteen thousand.
Lori Tan Chinn, who appeared in six seasons as the inmate Mei
Chang, told [[link removed]] _Time_ that
she’d made so little on the show that she couldn’t afford the
boxed sets; she considered going on food stamps, until she was cast on
the Comedy Central sitcom “Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens.” Beth
Dover recalled, “They’re telling us, ‘Oh, we can’t pay you
this much, because we’re pinching pennies.’ But then Netflix is
telling their shareholders that they’re making more than they’ve
ever made.” She added, “We have not been fairly compensated by any
stretch of the imagination.”

Starting in 2015, “Orange” won three consecutive _sag_ Awards
for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. But the
cost of attending the ceremonies rankled some actors, who would have
to fly themselves to Los Angeles and supplement the small stipends (if
anything) they’d receive for beauty needs. “As the show got more
and more known, my budget went down and down and down for any type of
hair and makeup for awards shows,” Taryn Manning, who played
Pennsatucky, said. Another actor recounted feeling “inadequate”
because she couldn’t afford a designer dress and—like many in a
cast that included a range of body types—couldn’t just grab a size
0 off the rack. “It sounds like champagne problems,” Glenn said.
“But it’s expected of you.”

Before one _sag_ Awards ceremony, the cast attended a house party
thrown by Ted Sarandos, then Netflix’s chief content officer and now
its co-C.E.O. Several actors remember that Sarandos gave a toast
bragging that more people watched “Orange” than “Game of Thrones
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of transparency about the ratings. (One actor called it a “whoops”
moment.) But the cast found the line less uplifting than galling; if
the show was really more popular than “Game of Thrones”—whose
top cast members have been said to make more than a million per
episode by the end—why were the salaries for “Orange” so paltry?
DeLaria told me, “I remember all of us thinking, ‘Give us the
money!’ But we were always saying, ‘Give us the money.’ We were
keenly aware that we weren’t being paid.” She added, referring to
her residuals, “I get twenty dollars! I would love to know: How much
money did Ted make last year?” (Twenty-two million in salary, plus
stock options.)

At the end of the fifth season, the series took a creative left turn:
the inmates, having staged a prison riot, are split into separate
buses, and the main characters are sent to maximum security. The
change in setting was refreshing, but it meant writing off much of the
supporting cast. Several actors said that they hadn’t even been told
what was happening. “Everyone was under the impression that an
entire bus of people was basically getting fired,” Myles recalled.
“Those looks on our faces as inmates are being loaded onto those
buses—‘Where are we going?’—that was not acting. That was
real.” She no longer had an episode guarantee, but she was assured
that she was still on the show. “They were, like, ‘Don’t worry,
we’ll call you when it gets closer to that time.’ And they
didn’t call me for two years.” Being in limbo could make it
difficult to find other jobs, if casting directors assumed that they
were still on “Orange.”

Morale slumped. “It was a miserable time in my life, even though it
was a big success,” Manning said, of her years on the show. “Just
so much doubt. Never knowing if you were a moment away from being
killed off.” (Her character overdoses in the penultimate episode.)
Though more actors were promoted to series regulars as time went on,
many who appeared consistently were stuck as recurring guest stars.
“As an actor, that’s a carrot that is always getting held in front
of you,” Guerrero said. “If you dedicate enough, and if they like
your character enough, you get the possibility of maybe one day being
a series regular.” Some actors described the atmosphere on set like
that of a fun sleepover, but others said that a hierarchy emerged,
exacerbated by a wide disparity in pay. “It wasn’t just money. It
was also respect,” DeLaria said. Marie-Lou Nahhas joined during the
final season, as an Egyptian-born inmate at an _ice_ detention
center. “When I came on, the baggage of the frustration was already
there,” she recalled.

How could a show so popular pay so little? One reason was the sheer
size of the ensemble, mostly unknowns. At the beginning, the show was
an experiment, and the tight budget was seen as a trade-off. “We
were working in outlaw country,” Tara Herrmann, one of the writers
and executive producers, told me. They were free to say or show most
anything, she said, excepting erect penises and, in some international
markets, swastikas. “We didn’t have to answer to corporate
sponsorship. In a way, that’s why I always felt, like, O.K., so
maybe the payouts aren’t as lucrative, but the offshoot is we get
all this creative freedom.” She recounted a meeting with Netflix, in
which she’d been told that the actors were getting a raise. “They
were sure to explain that the pay bump wasn’t contractually
obligated but a compensation they felt was overdue. I remember saying
that I’d hoped the raise would put our cast on par with our sisters
at ‘Game of Thrones’ or any big HBO show. But I don’t think it
did.”

Kohan (who declined to be interviewed) had little say over the
actors’ salaries, and she and her staff were just as in the dark
about the ratings as the cast was. The day after the final season’s
première party, Herrmann went on, “Jenji and I were brought to a
conference room, and they finally shared the numbers with us: a
hundred million users had seen at least one episode, and I want to say
at least half had completed all six seasons. 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.’ ”

As forward-thinking as “Orange” was, some people I spoke to saw
Hollywood’s old blind spots at work. DeLaria observed, “I think
some of this was because we were a female-centric show. I don’t
think there’s anybody out there who doesn’t know that women are
paid unequally to men. We can point at this show and really see it.”
One representative blamed Lionsgate for lowballing the cast,
particularly the actors of color: “The show was very much an
ensemble. However, there was significant disparity between the pay of
certain non-minority cast members and many actors of color who were
the fibre of the show.” (Lionsgate and Netflix declined to comment
on the record.) That disparity likely had roots in the narrative
evolution of the series, which initially centered on Piper and her
ex-girlfriend Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) but grew into a true
multiracial ensemble piece. Danielle Brooks, who played Taystee,
arguably the show’s emotional anchor toward the end, has said
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she was paid less on the final season than the lead child actors made
that same year on “Stranger Things
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All this is particularly ironic, given the show’s pointed critique
of an exploitative capitalist machine, a carceral system that makes
inmates work for pennies. Granted, prison is many times worse than a
stingy Netflix show, but the parallels, Glenn said, were
“uncanny.” _sag_’s call to arms has only reminded the
“Orange” cast that their role in the streaming revolution has a
dark underbelly. “We need to update the system,” Dover told me.
“They’re finding ways to cut our wages, and so the middle-class
working actor is screwed.” Although the show launched some cast
members—Uzo Aduba, Laverne Cox—into high-profile careers, others
have struggled. That’s not uncommon in show business, but usually
starring on a worldwide hit leaves you with some financial cushion.
“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,” Myles said. “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?” ♦

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Michael Schulman
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writer, has contributed to The New Yorker since 2006. His most recent
book is “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and
Tears
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* Orange is the New Black
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