SAG Awards: “Orange Is the New Black” cast award is a big win for women The show’s acclaim pro

SAG Awards: “Orange Is the New Black” cast award is a big win for women The show’s acclaim proves yet again that audiences can’t get enough of complex female characters “Women made Screen Actors Guild Awards history last night when Viola Davis and Uzo Aduba won the lead actress awards for television drama and comedy, respectively, marking the first year both lead TV actress awards were won by African American artists. Aduba’s win for her portrayal of vulnerable and volatile Suzanne “Crazy-Eyes” Warren on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” became especially sweet when the entire cast of the show won Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series, too.The characters of “Orange Is the New Black” span not only racial, ethnic and class backgrounds, but generations, too. What a rare thing it is to see a show devoted almost purely to womens’ stories, and to such a wide range, to boot. Affluent, white, first-time offender Piper might be the vehicle that brought viewers into Litchfield Penitentiary, but the histories and survival of her fellow inmates, a wide array of three-dimensional female characters who were all one person before they went into prison and became another once inside, fuel the show’s popularity.“Orange Is the New Black” is the best ongoing evidence that women characters—gay, straight, bisexual, trans, old, young, black, white, Asian, Latina, immigrant, rural, urban, rich, poor, working-class—have specific, complex and compelling stories to tell.  Litchfield doesn’t only have heroes and villains, it has a rich trove of anti-heroes, too, like the violent, meth-mouthed self-proclaimed religious prophet Pennsatucky, who is portrayed as worthy of empathy, ridicule and genuine fear. She appears alongside an egotistical activist nun, a trans woman feeling her family on the outside slip away from her, an inmate happily carrying a guard’s baby. The ruthless competition between kitchen gangs, helmed by two middle-aged women who know how to wield their power and influence, could be a show unto itself. These types of stories are rarely presented in an empathetic light to a mainstream audience, but rather than being marginalized for it, the “Orange Is the New Black” team is being rightly celebrated.Congratulations to the cast! Read the full piece and see the cast acceptance speech video here -- source link

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