Cast of ‘Orange Is The New Black’ say they did not receive compensation from Netflix

The cast of actors of the hit Netflix comedy-drama TV show Orange Is The New Black has said that they did not receive a fair amount of compensation after they appeared in it.

OITNB was originally released back in 2013 and follows Taylor Schilling’s character Piper Chapman as she begins a 15-month sentence in a maximum security women’s prison after she is found moving a suitcase full of drug money.

The cast of the show has now said in a new interview that they were only paid a Screen Actors Guild minimum wage of $900 per episode, even after the show became successful and generated a higher amount of income.

The actors included in the New Yorker interview are Kimiko Glenn, Emma Myles, Beth Dover, Alysia Reiner, Diane Guerrero, Taryn Manning and Lea DeLaria. Beth Dover said, “It actually COST me money to be in seasons 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. It’s maddening,” Dover added. “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. We have not been fairly compensated by any stretch of the imagination.”

Glenn added, “So many of my friends who have nearly a million followers, who are doing billion-dollar franchises, don’t know how to make rent,” before Myles noted, “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!’

Myles continued, “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. 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?”