Netflix's tidying-up master Marie Kondo would likely disapprove of Jenji Kohan's LA home as she seems to lack an appreciation for collections, Kohan tells RNZ's Kim Hill.
The Orange Is The New Black creator has a vineyard of plexiglass grapes, a roomful of trivets with sayings on them and collections of kewpie dolls and pink elephants – "my house is kind of a pink elephant because we had to be drunk to buy it".
Photo: Jenji Kohan
Even though Jenji Kohan grew up in Beverly Hills with a father she's called "the king of variety television in his day" (Buz) and a TV writer and actress mother (Rhea), her parents didn't want her to get into the entertainment business, and Rhea even tried to bribe her to go to law school with the offer of her own condo, Kohan says.
But the English literature graduate made her own way as a writer – first for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Friends and Gilmore Girls before she created the Showtime series Weeds, which premiered in 2012.
People weren't sure what to make of Weeds, which seemed ahead of its time, she says.
"It was very confusing to have a hybrid comedy-drama and a 'bad mother'.
"I'm really proud of Weeds. I think we did it backwards and in heels and kind of didn't get our due at the time."
Kohan came across Piper Kerman's 2010 prison memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison when she was given the book by a friend who knew Kerman personally, she says.
"She said 'take this book, I think it's your next show' – and she was right."
The first season of Orange Is the New Black premiered on Netflix in July 2013 with sharp writing and a diverse, mostly-female cast.
It became Netflix's most-watched original series, and its seventh and final season came out this July.
Since Orange Is the New Black came out Netflix has changed a lot behind the scenes, Kohan says.
"I enjoyed when they were young and carefree. Now they're very much mimicking old models."
When Orange Is the New Black concluded, Kohan created a writers incubator project with four of the show's writers.
Their first project – a TV series based on 1960s sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman – Netflix recently rejected, she says.
"I loved the material, I thought it was really rich… they thought it was too 'inside showbiz'. I don't like being rejected. I'm certainly grumbling a little."
Kohan was also forced to take the word 'slutty' out of her upcoming Netflix comedy previously titled Slutty Teenage Bounty Hunters.
"It's really annoying to have to answer to algorithms and engineers."
Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini, stars of the upcoming Netflix comedy formerly known as 'Slutty Teenage Bounty Hunters' Photo: Courtesy of Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini
Kohan has three years to go on a contract with Netflix. Some of her other projects currently in the works include:
- Worn Stories – a docuseries in which people talking about a favourite item of clothing (her first foray into documentary)
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives – a multi-writer series based on the speculative fiction of neuroscientist David Eagleman
- the fourth and final series of the all-female wrestling drama Glow.
"I'm a little overwhelmed right now. I said yes to too many things … I have a lot on my plate and there's a lot of pressure to keep up with everything."
Kohan's writers' room is kitted out for comfort, with squishy toys, colouring books, clay and magnets, she tells Kim Hill.
"I'm a little ADD and to keep me busy they gave me toys and things, to keep me sitting in the room. You can be sitting and colouring and really thinking about story. I like the balance."
Jenji Kohan was in New Zealand as a speaker at the 27th Annual Screen Production and Development Association of New Zealand (SPADA) Conference held at the Aotea Centre in Auckland.
If you want to know more about the Poussey Washington Fund mentioned in the interview you can find it here.
