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.
Retail platform operator and delivery company, Foxtrot,
raised $100 million in a Series C round led by D1 Capital Partners. Foxtrot bills itself as the modern convenience store that combines what it calls in-store curated discovery with 30-minute delivery and 5-minute pickup. Since launching first as a digital-only delivery service, the company has since grown into a popular local retailer, opening 16 brick and mortar locations across Chicago, Dallas, and Washington, DC. Foxtrot co-founder and CEO Michael LaVitola joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
A movie about the life of the late Betty White will premiere on what would have been her 100th birthday, January 17. The film will celebrate highlights from the trailblazer’s nearly eight-decade-long career.
Zogblog.com founder Zack O'Malley Greenburg joins Cheddar News to discuss his new Rolling Stone article, 'Nine of the 10 Highest-Paid Musicians of 2021 Were Men.'
Makena Kelly, politics reporter at The Verge, joins Cheddar News to discuss what's next for net neutrality as Biden's other nominee for the FCC, Gigi Sohn, awaits votes from the committee and Senate.
Food Network star Alex Guarnaschelli joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to dish on her new cooking competition show "Alex vs. America." The Iron Chef will be taking on three challengers at a time in a contest she hopes brings a unique look at the genre. "I think the reality of the show, the truth of those competitions, the grittiness, the waiting, the choices," said Guarnaschelli, listing what she hopes comes across from her show.
Jewell Jackson McCabe, chair of the Keep Love Alive Campaign and founder of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Marvin Owens, chief engagement officer of Impact Shares and former senior director of Economic Development at the NAACP, join Cheddar News to reflect on racial issues still prevalent in America.
Grocery stores are restricting hours and services due to omicron-related labor and supply chain issues. This also comes at a time of labor unrest for supermarket giant Kroger as more than 8,000 workers at its King Soopers chain in Colorado have gone on strike.
Sky Harbour, a company developing private aviation infrastructure, is gearing up to land on Wall Street. The company announced plans to go public through a SPAC deal with Yellowstone Acquisition Company, valuing the combined venture at $777 million. The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange as $SKYH.
On this episode of ChedHER: Model and Fashion Designer Catie Li breaks down what work needs to be done to improve representation in the beauty industry; Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President and CEO of DreamBox Learning, explains how technology is transforming the way the world learns, and her career journey as a leading woman of color in the tech industry.
