'Orange Is the New Black' Season 3 Release: Lea DeLaria Speaks On Big Boo & Art Imitating Life
Lea DeLaria's big episode in season 3 of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black mirrored her own life in many ways.
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DeLaria, who plays Carrie "Big Boo" Black on Orange Is the New Black, finally had a flashback episode in the series. Episode 4 featured a glimpse at Big Boo's history before going to prison. The episode showed her lack of interest in wearing dresses as a child and her confidence in being an out and proud lesbian as an adult.
The actress spoke with TVGuide.com recently and talked about how much the episode imitated her own experiences.
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"When I got the script and read the script, I called Lauren Morelli, who wrote it, and just kind of basically said, 'What, did you read my f---ing diary?'" DeLaria said. "Pardon my French. I can't believe how much of this is from my actual life."
The episode also featured Big Boo (in the present) pretending to be a reformed Christian renouncing her homosexuality in order to get money donations from a baptist church. Considering Big Boo's outspoken personality, the charade didn't last long and she wound up yelling at the visiting preacher. This too mirrored her own experience.
"I was literally having a Twitter war with the Westboro Baptist Church [when I got the script]. Craziness, right?" DeLaria said. "It mirrored my life so much that it was frightening. But I can say this, if you're a butch lesbian like I am, you have very shared experiences. There are a lot of common experiences between butches. The thing about the clothes, that's always a big fight for us. I used to run when Easter Sunday came around. I would run and hide because I knew that they would make me wear that damn dress."
Big Boo's personality is largely similar to DeLaria's. The actress was recently recorded on camera on a New York subway arguing with a preacher speaking against homosexuality. Big Boo dealt with similar homophobia in the episode, even from her own mother. Delray is hoping that her outspokenness will be a wakeup call to those in the LGBT community.
"I thought I'd get more people making that connection," DeLaria said. "The thing you have to understand is - this is me slapping my community a little bit - butch lesbians and nelly queens are sort of the pariahs of my community. There's a lot of middle-class mainstream assimilation of gays out there who don't like it. They want to sweep us under the carpet like a dirty secret ... We need to overcome this self-loathing that we have and this internalized homophobia, if you will, and accept who we are because we are our own community. We don't need to mimic the straight world. We don't need to mimic anyone. We just need to be us. And the more we accept who we are, the more other people will accept us."
Orange Is the New Black season 3 is currently available to stream on Netflix.
