What <em>Orange Is the New Black </em>Saw Coming

There was a moment during the seven years Jenji Kohan spent writing Orange Is the New Black when she spoke with a friend who was shooting a television series in Paris. “I was joking with her like, ‘You’ve written yourself into Paris and I’ve written myself into prison,’” Kohan told me on the phone earlier this month. “‘And you’re a genius and I’m an idiot.’ I spend my days in prison! And there’s nothing good to steal from the set to put in my living room.”

When we spoke, Kohan hadn’t quite wrapped her head around the fact that was ending—that the show she’d created and reshaped and experimented with since before streaming television even existed was almost over. During the final few days of shooting, when actors and crew members were crying and hugging and commemorating the last times they’d all be together or shoot in specific spaces, Kohan couldn’t conceive that they wouldn’t all be reuniting again in a few months to shoot another season. “I have a feeling it might creep in and there might be a delayed reaction or breakdown or whatever it is,” at the end of Season 3. But for the most part, was a show built on the understanding that “liberty and justice for all” is a lie.