On her first visit to Israel and its main gay pride parade, Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria said the Jewish state seems to have no unattractive women.
“There are apparently no ugly women in Israel,” DeLaria, a lesbian who plays the character of a butch lesbian prison inmate on the hit television comedy series, told Ynet in jest during an interview Tuesday upon her arrival in the country as a guest of Israel’s Tourism Ministry.
“I’ve not seen one ugly woman yet, but I can’t figure it out because I’ve seen, I’ve definitely seen ugly men here.”
The 2013 debut of Orange Is the New Black garnered 16 Emmy Award nominations, winning four awards, and set viewership records, according to Netflix, the online streaming television giant that produced the series. Netflix does not publish the specifics of its viewership statistics, but DeLaria told Ynet the series had reached more than 80 million viewers worldwide.
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The series follows an upper-class woman’s trials in federal prison, including the strains it places on her Jewish life partner. Lesbian sex is a constant theme in the series, including in the life of the protagonist.
DeLaria, who is also a gay rights activist, said she “never in a million years” thought that homosexuality would feature so prominently in a mainstream series like Orange Is the New Black. She also didn’t believe the United States would legalize same-sex marriage as the Supreme Court did last year in a ruling striking down state bans.
“It’s something I’ve been fighting for,” DeLaria said. She added that she had been assaulted and hospitalized for being gay.
She also told Ynet she never thought she would “be in Israel, in the Old City, standing at the Western Wall and have a man in your army, with his gun, there to protect people, come up” and ask her to pose with him for a picture.
Israel’s Tourism Ministry invited DeLaria to attend the events in the framework of the country’s Gay Pride week, which will culminate on June 3 with the gay pride parade in Tel Aviv. The city’s first gay pride event took place in 1993. This week, tens of thousands of locals and tourists are expected to participate in the parade, which features floats with dancers and ends at a beach party that usually continues until well into the following morning.
Tel Aviv is widely considered one of the world’s leading tourist destinations for gays and lesbians, with several gay community publications crowning it the world’s best travel destination.
