As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. And, with the final season of Orange Is the New Black right around the corner (August 9!), we anticipate a lot of change for the star of the series, Laura Prepon.
When she sat down with PureWow exclusively, Prepon explained she actually has a whole other venture on the horizon that she’s extremely excited about: directing.
That’s right, the 39-year-old Orange Is the New Black star hopes to get behind the camera more now that the series is coming to an end. But she’s no newbie to directing. In fact, she has already directed several episodes of the hit series and even helmed one this season.
Prepon spoke about her season seven directorial effort and said, “I love my episode. I love the story line, and it was just a lot of really amazing things this year…Directing is a huge passion for me.”
She first tried her hand at directing while starring on That ’70s Show. Prepon recalls following the series director around because she was, as she put it, “more interested in what he was doing than what anybody else was doing.”
Following that, she directed an independent movie when she was about 20, then began going to film school in the evenings while shooting That ’70s Show during the day. She directed, edited, wrote and produced a web series called Neighborhoods, which she says is still floating around the internet somewhere. So, when a similar opportunity arose with Orange Is the New Black, Prepon was more than happy to dive behind the camera.
Prepon reflected on the first episode she ever directed for Orange Is the New Black. It involved herself and Taylor Schilling (Piper) locked in a janitor’s closet naked and wrapped in a shower curtain with their hands and feet bound. Oh, did we mention she was pregnant at the time? It sounds intense to us, but for Prepon it felt like a fitting reentry into directing.
The multi-hyphenate explained, “I’ve been directing for a while now, but Orange is its own animal because there’s so much story and so many characters to get in a short period of time and it’s great.”
We couldn’t help but ask whether Prepon plans to direct her own movie or TV show now that OITNB is coming to a close. Her answer? “I have a lot of stuff going on and that is absolutely one of them. That is definitely a goal.”
Until then, we’ll be keeping close tabs on her directorial career.
