If Pop or Minetta or Rosemarie saw the show they’d recognise, immediately, that that was them. A composite figure, or a mashup of Morello.In both cases something real has been used as a basis to extrapolate: There’s no sign that Rosemarie’s engagement is anything other than genuine – her fiancé visits her every week – and Pop doesn’t have a smuggling ring, or at least not one that’s mentioned. Smuggling, in the book, is generally done in small quantities and at more risk, by visitors carrying contraband either on or in their person. Except, she then vanishes.Ī few pages later, we get Rosemarie, an eBay fraudster from near Boston, who is obsessed with weddings in general and her own in particular. Later she’ll develop an almost-maternal relationship with Piper.The first prisoner that Piper meets is Minetta, a driver, who “wore make-up and little gold hoops in her ears, and she looked like she could be a nice Italian-American lady called Ro from New Jersey.” So, Morello.

The core of the show character is there, but things are exaggerated for drama – Pop aspires to work in food service when she gets out rather than being a former cafe-runner, and although she is not happy when Piper insults the food, she never tries to starve her out. In the book, we have a middle-aged Russian woman nicknamed Pop, who is head of the kitchen and dresses and acts somewhat distinctly. Both have had edges removed, to turn them into, if not exactly a normal everyday rich suburban TV couple, then certainly less sympathetic, more grating characters. Bloom is surprised to find out that Chapman used to date women. Smith knew Kerman when she identified as a lesbian. Kerman’s husband, Larry Smith (see, there’s a difference right there, they never broke up), is an accomplished writer and editor, and has presumably never written a whiny piece about nearly wanking. Kerman had the additional indignity of half a decade between her trial in 1998 and her sentencing in 2003, years where she was being strung along and unable to make life plans. Kerman comes across as much more aware of her privilege in the memoir, and her situation is a fair bit shittier. But it turns out that the changes made to Piper for the show are largely responsible for her ability to vex.Kerman’s career – a jobbing editor and producer – is swapped out for a boutique soup company in the show. Given that she’s based on a real person who is lurking around in the credits, I figured this was an awkward, unfixable, holdover. I’m not alone in finding Piper Chapman somewhat annoying.

Piper Kerman was named as a co-conspirator in a drug ring and served 13 months of a 15-month sentence from February 2004 to March 2005. The real Piper served time in FCI Danbury (just over the border in Connecticut rather than the New York of the show’s Litchfield). Piper Chapman is based on Piper Kerman, loosely in some aspects and closely in others.

Piper kerman book