The oppression of it, the sense of helplessness, and really being part of a system and a bureaucracy that is arbitrary. I never thought of the depth of losing your freedom and what that meant. And I was surprised and delighted by ways people maintain their humanity and try to survive.

On the other hand, we worked a year on this and some people are going to watch it in a night and go, "We want more!" And there is something I miss about the longing and the anticipation for the next episode.

There's more to us than the moment we made a bad decision.

If you go to a network and say, "I wanna do prison stories about black women and Latino women and old women," you're not gonna make a sale. But, if you've got this blonde girl going to prison, you can get in there, and then you can tell all the stories. I just thought it was a terrific gateway drug into all the things I wanted to get into.

I think my immediate reaction was, "I'm so tired. I need a little more time." But, it was very quickly followed up by excitement. It's very flattering, and it's a wonderful vote of confidence. We dream of getting to do what we do.

You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up.

Even during the casting process, the pools of talent are so deep when you have a call for Latin women or black women or a middle-aged woman because they never get their shot. There's so much talent there.