With the latest series of Orange Is The New Black binged-and-gone by many, viewers are lapping up all the further details about the show they can find.
So it’s little surprise that a Vanity Fair article from 2014 has recently resurfaced in which the real-life Alex Vause spoke about the things the award-winning TV show got very wrong.
And there’s one major discrepancy Catherine Cleary Wolters is keen to clear up.
"We [her and Piper Kerman, whose book inspired the show] did not have sex in prison. Not even a little bit," she told the magazine in an exclusive interview.
It's a major bombshell given how much the characters' relationship drove the early seasons of the show.
It gets bigger - According to Wolters, she and the real life Piper, Piper Kerman, were actually only in the same prison facility for five weeks when the pair were in a Chicago detention centre to testify against a co-conspirator in their case.
Listen: The Binge debriefs about OITNB. (Post continues after audio.)
She says that when they were shackled together on the flight there, Kerman refused to even speak to her. Not exactly a feature of great romance.
"We were ghosts of the humans we had once been, milling about amongst hundreds of other human ghosts, shackled and chained, prodded through transport centers at gunpoint, moved through holding facilities," Wolters told the magazine.
“Praying is about the most intimate thing two people can do in some places, not sex. We made some mean dinners together, though, out of cans of cheese, corn chips, and chili, and Piper learned how to communicate effectively through a toilet—a little something you’ll never pick up at Smith.” (Post continues after gallery.)
“I was not Piper’s first, and I certainly did not seduce her,” she maintains.
Wolters alleges that the pair did not become romantically involved until after the pair had trafficked either heroin or money for a drug network, when a "crush" turned into a "crazy mad love affair".
She explained the pair weren't girlfriends, more "friends with benefits" until Kerman left before getting engaged to a man called Larry.
It wasn't until years later that the crime caught up with the pair. Kerman struck a plea which meant she spent just 13 months in a minimum-security prison in Connecticut beginning in 2004 which inspired Orange Is The New Black. Wolters served almost six years in a Californian prison for conspiracy to import heroin.
While she insists that there was never any sex between her and Piper, Wolters said she wasn't exactly celibate during her time in prison.
“Usually what you would do was have sex in your jail rooms. You’d have sex anywhere you could: the tennis court, the outdoor squash court, or the rake pile. Anyplace!" she said.
"When the guards aren’t around all bets are off. Everyone goes to it! They romanticise sex on the TV show."
Despite it all, Wolters has watched the show and says she's proud of Kerman sharing her story.
"This story isn’t about a fun ride through some old familiar haunt, giving me little glimpses and peeks of some fond old stomping ground. Christ, it’s my nightmare."
In a statement to Vanity Fair, Kerman confirmed Wolters claims that their on-screen relationship differed greatly to the reality.
"We certainly did not have sex in prison, and that should be quite clear in my book. The relationship between the characters in the Netflix series, Piper Chapman and Alex Vause, is fictional," she said.
"I did have the opportunity to make peace with Cleary in Chicago, to relinquish any sense of blame for her, and to work through my ideas and emotions about forgiveness and responsibility."
