As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. And, with the final season ofOrange Is the New Blackright 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-oldOrange Is the New Blackstar 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.
Preponspoke 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 onThat ’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 shootingThat ’70s Showduring the day. She directed, edited, wrote and produced a web series calledNeighborhoods,which she says is still floating around the internet somewhere. So, when a similar opportunity arose withOrange Is the New Black, Prepon was more than happy to dive behind the camera.
Prepon reflected on the first episode she ever directed forOrange Is the New Black.它涉及自己和泰勒先令(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, butOrangeis 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 thatOITNBis 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.