Orange Is The New Black

Season 4 M-Net Edge (*102) 21:00 Drama

Litchfield’s celebrity inmate and Southern TV chef Judy King (Blair Brown) has been a welcome addition to Orange Is The New Black’s (2013-current) already huge cast. But unlike Judy, who was convicted of tax evasion, Blair’s kept her nose clean when it comes to the law…

The 70-year-old’s character has 1

been likened to infamous TV chef Paula Deen with a dash of homemaker extraordinare Martha Stewart, who was famously jailed for tax evasion in 2004 and 2005. Blair adds that “they [Paula and Martha] can take themselves off the hook because Judy isn’t them. She happens to cook and be Southern.”

Blair graduated from Montreal’s 2

National Theatre School Of Canada in 1970 and immediately toured with the Stratford Festival Company which specialises in Shakespeare’s plays. “My original attraction to acting was sinking into other lives, becoming other people and taking on different values.”

She got into TV after meeting 3

Richard Jordan (Harley Gage from action series The Equalizer, 1985-1989) in 1976. He got her a part in mini-series Wheels (1978) and they lived together between 1976 and 1985. They have son Robert Christopher Hand Jordan (34).

Blair and Richard, who passed 4

away in 1993, never married but they co-owned a 101-year-old castle-like manor in Malibu, which they renovated in the ’80s. Blair joked that it’s “50 tons of stone. That’s a large commitment – much heavier than a marriage contract”.

Besides acting, she records audio 5

books for kids, saying, “My poor son is the child of actors. It’s terrible to have actors as parents, because they love to read to you and act. So I found a way to be paid and I’ll tell a story.”