Jenji Kohan
Jenji Kohan
Jenji Leslie Kohanis an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On......
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth5 July 1969
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
latin black casting
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.
nice support want
To be able to be there first, I love the pioneer thing. It's exciting to me. And they pay full rate, they're really nice, they support the work, and they said yes. What could be bad? It's the Wild West. You can do what you want.
song writing thinking
I begged her to write a song and she said yes. I am a huge Regina Spektor fan. I think she's a genius and just a lovely soul, and I wanted her voice on it. And she agreed, which is just the coolest thing, ever. She knocked it out of the park.
depressing drama struggle
I think it would be exhausting and depressing, to write, to watch and to live, if it was just focused on drama. It's heavy. Also, I think the humor really highlights the pathos and the struggle. You can slam it up against drama, and it makes both shine.
order people done
We fell in love with different people. Looking back, we might have done it in a different order, but we got invested. We really wanted to do the flashbacks because we wanted to explore who these women were on the outside versus the inside, and get a fuller picture of the masks we wear.
people together nexus
I'm always looking for a nexus, where you can put all these diverse people together, see how they respond to one another, see what they learn about each other, and what they like and don't like.
character people waiting
We watched these auditions and could only pick one. Sometimes we would add new characters 'cause we wanted to use another actress. There were so many people who were just waiting for something like this.
dream tired thinking
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.
girl white challenges
It was enormously challenging because you want that all-American girl, but you also want the cool WASP, privileged white girl. Usually, women in that package aren't funny.
children people upset
First of all, I find everything funny, which is upsetting to my children sometimes, and to people in my life, in general.
real lying thinking
I think shows that are completely dramatic are a lie. People use humor to cope. That is how we deal with things. In the darkest situations, there's humor. And if you don't show that, you're not being true to real life.
character thinking flare-up
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.
decision moments bad-decision
There's more to us than the moment we made a bad decision.
country badass space
I'm always looking for those places where you can slam really disparate people up against one another, and they have to deal with each other. There are very few crossroads anymore. We talk about this country as this big melting pot, but it's a mosaic. There's all these pieces, they're next to each other, they're not necessarily mixing. And I'm looking for those spaces where people actually do mix.