On Monday, actor Laura Gómez of Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black" told Cheddar "reality sometimes is too harsh to deal with, so fiction does the job."
Her comments follow the release of the hit show's seventh, and final, season on Friday, which sees the character she plays, Blanca Flores, navigate an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
"I think we have been doing this from the get-go, which is bringing these important topics to the table. But now — right now — we're living through this reality, which is [the] immigration crisis that we're going through," said Gómez. "We're going through an administration that is really demonizing immigrants."
Her character's story comes amid a larger effort by the show to incorporate immigration into its criminal justice and incarceration-oriented plotlines.
"I feel like we are here — I am here, as an immigrant myself — saying there's a rhetoric around this that is not right and is a little bit of divide-and-conquer. I think the show is humanizing these stories, and making us look directly into those issues, and making us confront it," she explained.
Last week, the show's staff announced the creation of the Poussey Washington Fund, a fund that will support several non-profits working on immigrant justice and criminal justice advocacy, including the Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Freedom for Immigrants.
Poussey Washington is the name of a beloved character on the show played by Samira Wiley who, at the end of the show's fourth season, is killed by a corrections officer.
"To use this fictional character to help real issues — and people are really living through those circumstances — is part of the power of the arts," said Gómez.
On Monday, Carolina Paiz, a writer and executive producer on the show, published an essay for Buzzfeed that described a trip to a detention center that the show's writing staff took. She explained why OITNB's focus has expanded to include immigration.
"What we saw there that day inspired an important part of our final season. But it also changed us. While we came in with wildly differing opinions on immigration, we all left stunned by what we'd witnessed, agreeing that it didn't stand for our American values," she wrote.
Perteet Spencer, Co-Founder of AYO Foods, joins ChedHER to discuss how the brand is bringing West African cuisine to the frozen food industry and building a grocery aisle her daughters can be proud of.
Crystal Etienne, Founder and CEO of period apparel company Ruby Love and Co-Founder of VC firm CaJE, joins ChedHER to discuss her experience bootstrapping her company to $10 million, and how she's creating a new era of venture capital and empowering Black women with 'soil' funding to start and grow their businesses.
E-commerce platform for construction and building materials RenoRun has raised $142 million in a Series B round, which the company says is the fourth largest Series B round in Canadian history. RenoRun’s platform offers same-day delivery of construction materials to job sites in Canada and the United States. The company aims to revolutionize the construction industry by maximizing productivity and efficiency. RenoRun co-founder and CEO Eamonn O’Rourke joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Like so many other cities, Miami experienced a tourism boom over the summer after vaccines were distributed. But, the Omicron variant has thrown the travel industry for a loop. David Whitaker, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, joined Cheddar to discuss the city as a tourist destination, and how it has handled headwinds from the pandemic.
Rockstar Energy, a subsidiary of Pepsico, unveiled its new beverage brand, Rockstar Unplugged, changing up the energy drink formula with hemp seed oil as an ingredient. PepsiCo Energy CMO Fabiola Torres joined Cheddar News to talk about how the product promotes “good vibes” and allows consumers to unwind and discuss partnering with "MTV Unplugged" for a concert series. "We couldn't find a better partnership that MTV," she said. "MTV Unplugged has been such an iconic proposition … and we believe that we're the right partners because the insight of our proposition for Rockstar Unplugged comes from music.
Eight months after the National Football League announced $1 million in research into cannabinoids, the NFL-NFLPA Joint Pain Management Committee has awarded the funding to two teams of medical researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Regina. The NFL says the studies will investigate the effects of cannabinoids on pain management and neuroprotection from concussion in elite football players, respectively. Cheddar correspondent Chloe Ailello spoke with Jeff Miller, the executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and policy for the NFL, about the studies, as well as the recent lawsuit filed against the NFL by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. "Maybe we can learn things from other alternative pain approaches that are going to benefit our player population and then sports medicine as a whole," Miller said.
Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, NJ and Ayana Morris, co-director of the documentary 'Why Is We Americans?,' join Cheddar News to discuss the new documentary highlighting the impact of the Baraka family.
Former New York City mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani made his singing debut on a taping of Fox’s The Masked Singer. However, Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke, two judges on the competition show, reportedly left in protest when Giuliani was unmasked upon being eliminated.
All Hands celebrates Black History Month by highlighting achievements in inclusivity and paying homage to those who have fought for equal rights. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) joins Cheddar News to discuss voter suppression; Damali Peterman, CEO of Breakthrough ADR, elaborates on the biggest barriers for Black professionals; Andre Perry, senior fellow of Brookings Institution, dives into student loans and the racial wealth divide; and lastly, BET CEO Scott Mills discusses the company's initiatives for 2022.
