Alysia Reiner, an American actress and producer who is famous for playing Natalie “Fig” Figueroa in the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black revealed she got emotional filming the show’s final season and broke down on the set.
The 49-year-old was the warden of an ICE detainment facility in this season. In the seventh and final season, the show told about the people affected by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
While shooting the ICE storyline during the current border crisis was overwhelming for Reiner.
”My character doesn’t break down. She handles it. She keeps it in,” Reiner said. “But after two takes, it was the first time in my life where I stopped a set, where I could not breathe and I could not stop crying. Just the idea of what’s going on.”
”It’s deeply heartbreaking,” she said.
She said the writers of the show did “an extraordinary job” tackling the difficult subject matter, and to portray the scene in a realistic way some even visited actual detention centers.
Reiner added it was “disheartening” to hear from writers that what was written into this season was actually “less severe than what’s actually going on.”
”The holding areas are large, bulletproof fish tanks,” wrote Carolina Paiz, a writer for the show, in an opinion piece for BuzzFeed News on the conditions inside the detainment facilities.
”Inside, tables and benches are bolted to the floor, some with checkerboard tops but no pieces to play with. Individual cells line the walls. Inside, detainees in prison scrubs lay on metal bunks, bored. They turn to look at us as we walk by. We try not to stare, pretending we’re not part of some disaster tourism group.”
Reiner said: ”This hotline is necessary for people in detention centers. It’s horrific that it’s been shut down, so deeply wrong.”
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