‘Orange is the New Black’ Writer Dating Star Samira Wiley After Divorcing Husband

An Orange is the New Black writer who realised she was gay on the set of the hit prison drama has filed for divorce after falling in love with one of the show’s stars.

Lauren Morelli and her husband, Steve Basilone, have jointly filed to end their two-year marriage just three months after she opened up about her sexuality in an essay she wrote for Identities.Mic in May.

Morelli wrote, “I realized I was gay in fall 2012, one of my first days on the set. While Writing for Orange Is the New Black, I Realized I Am Gay.

“Five months after my wedding, I flew to New York to start production on my first episode of Orange, and from that moment on my life fell into a parallel rhythm with (lead characters) Piper’s story in a way that went from interesting to terrifying in a matter of months.”

It took an intimate scene between lesbian characters Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) and Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) for Morelli to really come to terms with her sexuality.

She adds, “I was nervous about the first love scene I’d written for Alex and Piper. I loved writing it, loved watching a tenderness emerge in their relationship where passion always seemed to be the ruling principle, but by that time, I was so deep in my own self-doubt that I constantly felt like a fraud. I was sure it was bleeding into my writing. How could it not? I was married to a man, but I wasn’t straight.”

Since coming out, she has been snapped holding hands and kissing Samira Wiley, who plays frustrated lesbian character Poussey Washington on the show, and the new couple has posted shots of themselves together on Instagram.

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