“Did you know? How could you not know?”
Lauren Morelli, writer of the popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black, has recently filed for divorce from her husband, television writer Steve Basilone, after being married for two years.
According to TMZ, the couple filed a joint petition after Morelli came to the realization that she was a lesbian.
Morelli began writing for Orange five months after she got married. After writing for Piper, the main character, she began to feel like a fraud when she became turned on by Piper’s lesbian relationship with Alex.
“I found a mouthpiece for my own desires and a glimmer of what my future could look like,” Morelli said.
In the divorce, Morelli will get to keep her Lexus, apartment, and sapphire engagment ring. Basilone will get to keep his Mazda hatchback.
The first girl I ever dated, and the first girl I married are both gay now. So I guess it makes perfect sense that I write comedy.
— steve basilone (@sbasilone) June 13, 2014
Some days you feel on top of the world, like nothing can stop you. And others you're on TMZ.
— steve basilone (@sbasilone) September 15, 2014
Morelli expanded her story in an article on Mic.com writing, “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 Piper’s story in a way that went from interesting to terrifying in a matter of months.
“I was nervous about the first love scene I’d written for Alex and Piper. I’d 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.”
Over the last year, Morelli has admitted to Googling “How do you know you’re a lesbian?”, wondering if it was just the hormones from her birth control, and wanting to die in order to keep from disappointing her husband and her parents. But now everything seems to be going well for the 32-year-old writer.
“I am now out to my family, my friends and most of my co-workers on Orange,” she wrote. “Now, when I am in the writers’ room or on set, I no longer feel like I am stuck in the middle of two truths. I belong because my own narrative fits in alongside the fictional stories that we are telling on the show: stories of people finding themselves, of difficult paths and of redemption.”
Morelli also recently began dating Samira Wiley who plays who plays Poussey Washington on Orange is the New Black. The two were seen together in August at the Emmy awards.
Orange is the New Black season three will be released on Netflix in June 2015.