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‘Orange is the New Black’ shoot to close parts of downtown Friday

NETFLIX COURTESY PHOTO | Actress Taylor Schilling in a season one episode of 'Orange is the New Black.'
NETFLIX COURTESY PHOTO | Actress Taylor Schilling in a season one episode of ‘Orange is the New Black.’

Road closures downtown are expected tomorrow morning into the early afternoon as the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” will be shooting downtown.

Diane Tucci, marketing director with the Suffolk Theater, confirmed Thursday morning that the theater had signed a contract with the production company, and according to the town supervisor’s office, “there will be intermittent road closures between Roanoke and East Main Street between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m.”

The streaming series available only through Netflix, “Orange is the New Black” takes place in a women’s prison, and is ordinarily filmed at the now-defunct Rockland Children’s Psych Center in Orangeburg, N.Y. However as of late, the series has been filming at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverside, and had been screening for “scary-looking extras” to fill in scenes.

According to Deputy Supervisor Jill Lewis, while film crews were on site in the area recently, the East Main Street theater stood out as a possible filming location. The series had apparently been slated to film at a Nassau theater, though using a site closer to the jail only made sense.

“When they were doing the jail scenes, they were going to be taking the crew back to another theater in Nassau, but when the crew was out here they noticed the Suffolk Theater,” Ms. Lewis said. “So they figured, ‘Why go there, when this is already nearby?’”