Piper Chapman ( Taylor Schilling) is sentenced to fifteen months at Litchfield Penitentiary, a women's prison, for a drug-related crime she committed ten years earlier.
For the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, the series was honored with 12 nominations, winning Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series ( Uzo Aduba). Taylor Schilling was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. Also was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Comedy Series, Writers Guild of America Award for Television: New Series and NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series. The series received numerous accolades including: Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Comedy Series. Orange is the New Black received critical acclaim.
Piper had been convicted of transporting a suitcase full of drug money for her then-girlfriend Alex Vause ( Laura Prepon), an international drug smuggler. The series revolves around Piper Chapman ( Taylor Schilling), a woman in her 30s living in New York City who is sentenced to 15 months in Litchfield Penitentiary, a minimum-security women's federal prison (initially operated by the "Federal Department of Corrections," a fictional version of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and later acquired by Management & Correction Corporation (MCC), a private prison company) in upstate New York. The title sequence features photos of real former female prisoners including Kerman herself. The series began filming in the old Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center in Rockland County, New York, on March 7, 2013. In July 2011, Netflix was in negotiations with Lionsgate for a 13-episode TV adaptation of Kerman's memoirs. Created and adapted for television by Jenji Kohan. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison (2010), about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison. It consists of thirteen episodes, each between 51–60 minutes. The first season of the American comedy-drama television series Orange Is the New Black premiered on Netflix on July 11, 2013, at 12:00 am PST in multiple countries.