Comedy? Drama? Tough to label Orange Is the New Black
Show creator speaks about her frustration with awards shows
NEW YORK — The creator of Orange Is the New Black says though the Emmys switched the hit show from the comedy category to drama, she’s not a fan of people boxing the series into a single genre.
“The whole label thing is frustrating — just people’s needs to define us. OK, you know, whatever you want to call us, fine,” Jenji Kohan said in a recent interview. “Are we a comedy? Are we a drama? ... Are we doing good work or not? Do you like us or not? As you can hear, I have issues with the whole, you know, beauty contest thing. It’s fraud.”
The show, in its third season on Netflix, is nominated for outstanding drama series at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards — which airs Sept. 20 — though last year it competed for outstanding comedy series.
The Television Academy announced this year that shows with episodes of 30 minutes or less are now designated a comedy, while those over a half-hour are dramas. Netflix’s petition to keep the hour-long OITNB in the comedy category was denied, according to a report by Variety. Also nominated in the drama category are AMC’s Better Call Saul, PBS’ Downton Abbey, HBO’s Game of Thrones, Showtime’s Homeland, and AMC’s Mad Men.
“(To say), ‘You’re in this box and you’re in that box’ — we’ve always been hard to define; we’re kind of a hybrid, and people feel this need to call us something, and I don’t feel the same need to say what we are. So, that’s on them,” Kohan said.
This year, OITNB earned a Golden Globe nomination for best television series, musical or comedy and won outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
At the Emmys, OITNB is also nominated for outstanding casting for a drama series, outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for Emmy winner Uzo Aduba and outstanding guest actor in a drama series for Pablo Schreiber.
Kohan, who also created the Showtime series Weeds, said she has a complex when it comes to awards shows.
“It’s complicated because ... I can’t base my self-worth or the show’s self-worth, on how other people award us or nominate us or feel about us because when we don’t win we can’t say, ‘ Oh, then we weren’t good,’ or when we do win, ‘ We were better’ — because I’m just proud of the work we do,” she said. “It’s really nice to have outside validation, but ultimately it’s sort of a dog-andpony tale, and it can be subjective. And if I can’t be all-in when we lose, I can’t be all-in when we win either, so I have to be careful with that, just to protect myself.”