When the first season of Orange Is the New Black dropped on Netflix in summer 2013, the streaming site wasn’t even half the gargantuan it is today. At the New York City premiere of The Public at the New York Public Library, OITNB star Taylor Schilling recalled what it was like to work on the show when it was Netflix’s newest original series. Back then, Netflix coached its stars how to talk about the release style: “I remember in the PR discussion, they’d be trying to train us so we could train the audience to think about watching all the shows at once, so that it wouldn’t be such a foreign concept.â€
Schilling said there was one word they were asked to gently correct. “They didn’t want to use the word ‘binge’ because it had such negative connotations with eating,†she said. “We were told not to use that word, and redirect journalists when they’d say something like, ‘You can binge all the shows.’ We’d say, ‘No, you can watch them at your own pace,’†Schilling told Vulture. Two years later, she said, the memo changed: “Then, Netflix gave us these Tupperware containers that said #Binge. They fully owned it, leaned into it.â€