In 1993, the woman behind Big Boo famously called herself “a big dyke” on late night television. More than two decades later, she talks to BuzzFeed about achieving her goal of changing mainstream America’s perceptions of queer people, thanks to Jenji Kohan’s hit Netflix series.
Netflix
More than two decades ago, Lea DeLaria stood on the stage of The Arsenio Hall Show, introduced herself, and proudly stated, "I'm a biiiiiiig dyke! Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I'm a big one! Yes, I am. And that's OK." But in the years that followed her now legendary and groundbreaking 1993 appearance — DeLaria was the first openly gay comic to appear on late night television — not all members of Hall's audience seemed to agree with the "that's OK" portion of her statement.
"People responded in a variety of different ways. I remember very distinctly being late for a plane in Miami and having a guy go, 'You're that lesbian freak. Do something lesbian freaky,'" DeLaria, who now plays the fan favorite tattoo-covered, buzz cut-sporting, ladies' lady Big Boo on the hit series Orange Is the New Black, said in between sips of tequila and Heineken at a hotel bar in Austin, Texas, the day the second season debuted on Netflix. "I also remember being in L.A. with my girlfriend at the time in a convertible. We were at a stop sign and I reached over and kissed her and there was this big four-wheel drive, blacked out windows [type of car]. The window comes down and there's this banger driving the car and I thought, I'm dead. And he goes, 'You're very talented. I saw you on The Arsenio Hall Show.'"
DeLaria continued to have both positive and negative interactions the public, but the ones that stand out largely fall into the latter category. "I was in a cab and I couldn't get by and these cops were sitting there and I went, 'My meter's running!' And they go, 'Well, you're gonna have to be patient, aren't you, you dyke bitch?'" she recalled of a 1998 incident while she was starring in the Broadway revival of On the Town. "At that time, I had all these people wanting my autograph and wanting to take a picture with me and here, I have a New York cop calling me a 'dyke bitch.'"
But now, more than 20 years after she called herself "a big dyke" on Arsenio Hall and more than 15 since a member of the NYPD called her "a dyke bitch," DeLaria is seeing a change. "This is what's different: Now, I'm not getting any negativity. In fact, teenage boys come up to me on the street and want to get their pictures taken with me, want to give me a hug, tell me that Big Boo's their favorite character. That means a lot to me. Because I'm winning the hearts and minds of people that are young and are going to grow up and control the world," she said in a rare humorless moment. "I live in Bushwick. I get off the M line, I'm walking down Stockholm Street, and this 17-year-old kid hanging out, shirt off, with his bike in the middle of summer screams, 'Yo! Whoa! Wait! You're Big Boo! You're Big Boo!' He's a 17-year-old Puerto Rican guy and he wants to get his picture taken with me," she continued, thumbs pointed inward toward her Blondie T-shirt. "That's different to me. That's amazing to me. That's a huge change. It also happens with 17-year-old girls, which is amazing as well. And on the other end of the spectrum, I have 40-, 50-, 60-, 70-year-old men, who are usually very 'I'll-let-my-wife-do-all-the-talking' kind of guys, who want to get their pictures with me, want to shake my hand, want to talk to me about the show. That's an amazing thing. Because their minds have been made up and were made up a long time ago."
And DeLaria knows she has Orange Is the New Black to thank for that shift. The comedian and actress, who said she still gets called "sir" every single day of her life, has a made a career out of being the butch lesbian in Hollywood — she hit on Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) at Carol (Jane Sibett) and Susan's (Jessica Hecht) wedding on Friends and danced with Elise Elliott (Goldie Hawn) in The First Wives Club . And after more than 30 years in show business, the now 56-year-old actress has found herself playing someone she never played before: a butch lesbian with real emotions. "You never see a three-dimensional butch dyke. You see a three-dimensional lipstick lesbian or a femme or a 'girl,' but the most you'll see from us is stomping around, grabbing a beer, beating up a girlfriend. You know, I've played 'em… But I made the decision I wasn't going to play those characters anymore. I can't even tell you how much work I've turned down because I refuse to play that character anymore. I refuse to make that stereotype live anymore. It was just something I grew tired of. I was done with other people controlling the images of who we really are in our lives," she said with her elbows resting on the table, revealing a large "B-U-T-C-H" tattoo on her right arm. "That doesn't tell the reality of who we are in our lives and I just went, 'No. No more.' That's why this character means so much to me. That's why Big Boo is, I think, important."
Lea DeLaria as Big Boo on Orange Is the New Black
Eric Leibowitz/Netflix
Orange audiences haven't seen Big Boo get violent with a significant other, but the character, who's usually seen stomping around, talking about sex, still perpetuates butch misogyny within the lesbian community. "Maybe I'll get in trouble for saying this, but stereotypes aren't born out of a vacuum," she said of the prison wife/bitch dynamic on Orange Is the New Black. "The thing about a prison is it's everything in the extreme. Everything is to the nth degree. Because this is what they have to do to stay alive. And none of us have ever been to prison, so we don't know what that feels like. I mean, the closest I've been is jail. Prison is an entirely different thing," DeLaria said of her arrest at the 1993 March on Washington, before joking that she'd "probably do very well in prison."
"People live their lives in extremes when they're in extreme situations… [Butch misogyny is] not really part of what a butch is anymore. It really isn't. But the reason it's part of who Big Boo is is because she's in that extreme situation. And what's interesting about Big Boo is she transcends that a lot. You see her get past that all the time. Here's the thing, and for me, it's a huge issue within the queer community right now: We cannot forget where we came from. We cannot forget our history. And butch dykes and nelly faggots, that's where we came from. And that's certainly a big part of who the community is today, as much as people want to sweep that under the carpet."
Perhaps the most transparent example of Big Boo's treatment of women came in the form of the Season 2 "fuck-off," as DeLaria called the competition between her character and Natasha Lyonne's Nicky to bed the most inmates, with the hilarious, but underused Chang (Lori Tan Chinn) refereeing. "I've had a crush on Natasha since Slums of Beverly Hills, which is a little gross to admit. What's good about it is I now have a great friend in Natasha," DeLaria said. "The two of us are always trying to make each other laugh. If it gets a little bit more out of control, someone's gonna have to come and put the kibosh on it. Some producer's gonna come in and go, 'OK. You two need to stop now.' Tash will do anything to fuck with me before a take. Season 2, we both were toe-to-toe, like, I'm gonna fuck you up, bitch, especially during the fuck-off."
"But Season 1, man, this was the worst ever. It was that really hardcore, dramatic stuff after Trish [Madeline Brewer] died. And it was my close-up. So camera's on me tight. And I'm working up tears and I'm not that kind of actor. Everybody else studied, but I come from The Improv. I'm a comic. So I'm working up the tears and I don't want to actually cry; I just want to have tears in my eyes. And I'm feeling ready to go and I know, in any second, the director's going to yell, 'Action!' And Tasha, off camera, sitting there, goes, 'The Phantom of the Opera!' And just starts singing out of the blue! And I burst out laughing and I was like, 'You cunting whore! You fucking filthy bitch.' It took me forever. Every time they'd be ready, I'd start laughing again. I was able to work 'em back up, but I wanted to kill her. And the whole place cracked up. It wasn't just me. Everybody lost it."
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