Tag Archives: Piper Kerman

The Real ‘Alex Vause’ Says OITNB Relationships Are “Total Fiction” (Video)

The real life Alex Vause has described Orange Is the New Black relationships as “total fiction” in a new interview.

Cleary Wolters, on who the Vause character is based, says in this preview of a Security Brief interview that the show made prison look “like a lesbian bed-and-breakfast”.

If that’s really the way prison were, I probably would’ve stayed.”

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The hit Netflix series – as if you didn’t know – is based on Piper Kerman’s account of her stay in a women’s prison for money laundering and drug trafficking charges. Charges brought about by Wolters (her one lover) naming her.

Wolters has been a critic of the show and Kerman’s interpretation before. However, given that show now has millions of adoring OITNB fans, she may want to hold off on exposing the accuracy of the relationships we’ve laughed, cried and very much blushed over these past few years.

The full interview is yet to be aired, and hopefully Wolters will clear things up for us and maybe even reveal some secrets as to what’s left to come in the story.

Watch the clip of Wolters below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpiDdQrXlKU

The Real-Life ‘Alex Vause’, Discusses Piper and Lesbian Sex in Prison

We have to admit that we’re totally fans of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black and have been completely swept away in the personal lives of Piper, Alex and the other Litchfield Correctional inmates.

However, sadly the truth is the real-life Piper’s prison stay and romance with her real-life ex-girlfriend, is far from as seen on TV.

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In fact, the original Alex Vause — 50-something former felon Cleary Wolters — tells HuffPost Live that her romance with Piper Kerman (Taylor Schilling‘s character Piper Chapman on the series) was far too brief to be noteworthy – kill joy.

I’m flattered that they picked out me in her life as such an interesting, charismatic character that they had to make a whole backstory about me. I never imagined I’d be Donna from That 70s Show. When I watch that part of the series, I watch it as a viewer. I don’t say ‘that’s my life.'”

Other differences between OITNB and real prison life? There’s much less sex — at least out in the open.

Also read: ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Gets Season 4 Renewal From Netflix, And We Get Another Sneak Peak of the Next Season

 

There is sex occurring, but it’s not happening in the showers without a shower curtain. if you get caught having sex, you go to . . . solitary confinement. I never saw it. In fact, I might have stayed had that been the case. There’d be a line to get into prison if it were as fun as Orange Is the New Black shows it to be.”

‘Orange Is The New Black’ Character Inspired By Real-Life Peace Activist

Sister Ingalls, the TV nun on Orange is the New Black, was inspired by real-life peace activist, Sister Ardeth Platte, who served on the Saginaw City Council and spent time behind bars.

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In the late ’80s, Platte was a frequent visitor outside the former Paul B. Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, where the nun led protests against nuclear weapons. After her arrest and conviction in Colorado, Platte served time alongside Kerman. As Kerman wrote, “only the nun got more mail than me.”

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“I never tied myself to a flagpole. I go into nuclear weapons sites to pray, to vigil, to expose what is there, to try to speak my peace about total abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Sister Ardeth Platte

Orange Is the New Black is based on the book of the same name about Piper Kerman’s experiences in a Connecticut women’s prison. The autobiography details how Kerman, through a brief relationship with an international drug runner, became a mule, a past that caught up to her years after she’d found a more productive use for her talents.

“On my first day in the Camp someone had helpfully informed me that there was a nun there — in my side-smacked daze, I vaguely assumed they meant a nun who had chosen to live among prisoners. I was correct, sort of.

Sister Ardeth Platte was a political prisoner, one of several nuns who are peace activists and served long federal sentences for trespassing in a nonviolent protest at a Minuteman II missile silo in Colorado.”

Piper Kerman

The sister has read Kerman’s book, in which she appears a handful of times. However she has chosen not to watch the TV show, believing it takes too many liberties compared to her real-story.

“There’s too much license with it. It probably has too much license in it for me, though I know a lot of people say, ‘It really has taught me a lot.'”

Sister Ardeth Platte

Platte, now 78, has a day job, and that’s her mission to promote nuclear disarmament.