Laura Prepon Trades Comedy for Drama in New Netflix Series

• Tweet
• Pin It

With Are You There, Chelsea? canceled, Laura Prepon needed a new job and has has very quickly found one. My hats goes off to Prepon for going in the complete opposite direction of her mediocre sitcom and finding herself a solid drama to work on. Most of us are only familiar with Prepon’s comedic roles – in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her in anything but comedies – but that doesn’t mean she won’t fit right at home in something a bit more serious. But the move is still a risk, made even more so when you take into account the series will be airing on Netflix.

As reported by TVLine, Prepon was cast in Orange is the New Black, a prison drama from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan. The series was a given a 13 episode order by Netflix and will be part of its first push into original programming. I say this is a risk because original programming on Netflix is untested water. We don’t yet know if Netflix will be able to build audiences for it’s programming and be able to make them profitable. I would like to hope it will be, but it’s such a strange new concept that predicting any outcome seems pointless until we start getting some real data.

For now we can just learn about what’s coming on Orange. The drama series is being produced by Lionsgate and is based on the book by Piper Kerman. It stars Taylor Schilling as Piper, a Brooklyn native who is arrested thanks to her former relationship with a college drug-runner. Prepon will be playing the role of Piper’s ex, Alex, which just caused a bunch of people to declare they’re desire to watch this show just so they can see Prepon and Schilling kiss. Real mature.

Other projects coming to Netflix are David Fincher’s House of Cards, Hemlock Grove and the new season of Arrested Development.