Last summer, the Black Lives Matter movement had infiltrated national and international consciousnesses. Seeping out of the heartlands of the United States, global protests were taking place in France, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and the UK. It would be easy to dismiss the impact that Orange Is the New Black had on this narrative as a fictional TV show about a women’s prison called Litchfield. But when season four broadcast, the show seemed to capture an essence of a fractious political climate where black people were reawakening to the crimes committed against them. And this was thanks to the fact that, at its core, OITNB is a show that has always worked to redefine and explore what it means to be black on screen. This is apt considering the preponderance of black people in US prisons: 30% of female prisoners are African American.

Over its run, OITNB has helped normalise a new kind of “socially aware” blackness on TV. Since the second season, when Piper Chapman’s (Taylor Schilling) narrative began to conspicuously fade into the background, black characters such as Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson, Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren, Sophia Burset, “Black Cindy” Hayes and Poussey Washington have taken centre stage. Despite the tragedy of their situation, in OITNB the black characters are, in the main, full-bodied, refreshing and complex. They are given the space to develop by both falling into and breaking stereotypes about black women.

Taystee (Danielle Brooks) is a good example of this. First introduced as a bouncy, brash joker who steals a few strands of Piper’s blond hair to jazz up her curls, Taystee gradually blossoms into a woman who not only knows her worth, but also has a deep understanding of institutional racism and the power of her natural, sometimes joyful leadership. “I think the reason that she goes from agreeing with the system to not is because of the corruption of the system,” Brooks says over the phone. “She gets enough strength to say: ‘The system is broken and it’s made out of sand. It’s crumbling and it’s being knocked down.’ But she wants to rebuild it and build a strong foundation out of bricks for Litchfield, because it’s her home.”

Taystee gets enough strength to say: The system is made out of sand. It’s crumbling and it’s being knocked down Danielle Brooks (Taystee)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Danielle Brooks (second right) as Taystee in season five of Orange Is the New Black. Photograph: Jojo Whilden/Netflix

The “corruption” Brooks is referencing here is the death of Taystee’s best friend Poussey (Samira Wiley) – who is accidentally killed by a prison officer during a peaceful protest in season four – and the subsequent downplaying of it by the prison authorities. After this, Taystee goes from being sceptical of social justice to having an implicit understanding of its importance. “You ain’t never gonna change that shit,” she tells Sophia (Laverne Cox) in the first season about access to healthcare and basic human rights in prison, which she deems as “white people politics”. But in season five – spoilers ahead! – she embodies the role of an activist and campaigner, writing up a list of demands as the prisoners hold guards to ransom during a riot and speaking to the press, who have finally taken an interest in what’s happening at Litchfield thanks to celebrity prisoner Judy King being captured on camera trussed up to a makeshift crucifix (let’s not get into that).

Flanked by the Black Girls of Litchfield, she has the strength to tell the press that Judy King will not be making a statement: “Judy King cannot speak for the inmates of this prison,” she says to an onslaught of paparazzi and news reporters. “Moments after our friend Poussey Washington was murdered by a guard, Judy King was packing her bags to go home on early release. Because she’s rich and white and powerful. Our fight is not with Judy King; our fight is with a system that don’t give a damn about poor people. And brown people. And poor, brown people.” Instead of letting Judy hijack the narrative, Taystee is able to subvert Judy’s white privilege to find her voice.

“It was so much more powerful to have Taystee speak for her people,” says Brooks. “To let them know: ‘I’m here, and I hear you and I’m with you; I’m one of you.’ I feel like that’s what we do every day as actors in OITNB. We didn’t know we were going to take on this responsibility. I’m very much like Taystee in that way; I realised I had a voice, too.” It’s a striking monologue, and while TV shows such as Empire, Black-ish and New Girl have all attempted to offer up fictional commentary on Black Lives Matter, it’s only OITNB that has pulled it off with a semblance of poise that reflects the fact that black women have been at the forefront of the movement since its inception.

It's impossible for people watching to change the channel as quickly as when [police brutality] is depicted on the news Uzo Aduba (Crazy Eyes)

Despite this, the show was criticised last season for its depiction of black characters whose storylines revolved around inmate-driven racial conflicts. Some went as far to describe it as “trauma porn”: exploiting black struggles for white audiences. It seemed pertinent that nearly 90% of the OITNB writers are white (according to Fusion), considering Poussey’s death and the racial slurs that were chucked around with startling lightness last season.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Uzo Aduba as Suzanne ‘Crazy Eyes’ Warren in Orange Is the New Black. Photograph: Allstar/Lionsgate

Cast members disagree with these criticisms. “I don’t think the show was too traumatic,” says Uzo Aduba, who plays Crazy Eyes, “because we were having a conversation here in this country at the time where we weren’t fully addressing police brutality and racism. It felt like someone else’s problem. It was impossible for people watching to change the channel as quickly as, say, when it’s being depicted on the news.”

Brooks agrees, explaining that she thinks viewers were able to connect the storyline of Poussey with real-life incidents of police brutality. “I organised for the cast of Orange Is the New Black to march for Eric Garner in New York City. Maybe about 10, 15 of us went out there,” she says. Nevertheless, both Aduba and Brooks, along with Laverne Cox, who plays Sophia Burset, admit to finding the episode where Poussey dies almost too painful to watch.

“We were all on stage in tears at a panel, talking about that moment from the show,” says Cox. “They screened that last episode at the end [of the panel] and I couldn’t watch. I just got emotional so I had to turn away.” Her perspective on black trauma within OITNB is particularly interesting as Sophia arguably has the most sustained traumatic narrative in the whole of the show. She is the only trans woman depicted and as well as struggling to retain access to her hormone medication in the first season, by the end of season four she has been subject to transphobic abuse, beaten up, put in solitary confinement for months and has attempted suicide. This has been another criticism levelled at the show: couldn’t Sophia just catch a break?

“I mean, prison’s rough for trans women,” says Cox. “And I think the ways in which race plays itself out on our show is really layered and complicated. What I love about the show is how it’s sparked a lot of conversations about race, about mass incarceration, about gender and sexuality and diversity and casting and diverse body types and age.”

Cox acknowledges that OITNB has been particularly groundbreaking thanks, in part, to its depiction of black characters. “We were the first streaming show with all these women of all different backgrounds and shapes and sizes and we were successful. [Because of that] I think the landscape begins to open up. The industry understands that people will still tune in and watch if the stories are compelling. But is there more work that needs to be done, to hire more actors who look like the world around us? Absolutely.”

Like Cox, Aduba says her aim was to portray her character, Crazy Eyes, as honestly as she could. A character who is black, mentally ill and hasn’t been swallowed up by their predicament is a rarity on TV. “I hope that the conversation on mental health is eventually treated as seriously as any other illness,” she says. “No one would ever laugh at someone battling cancer. We would support them and try to find every remedy that we can and treatment,” she says. “I don’t believe mental health is given the same level of care, particularly within minority communities. It’s still long from the place of being addressed.”

In Orange Is the New Black, blackness is not usually silenced without cause; it is given a platform to be explored. And that’s a powerful thing to have on our screens

Season five of Orange Is the New Black will stream from 9 June on Netflix