‘OITNB’ Actress Lea DeLaria’s Broken Engagement Announcement Is Unconventional (to Say the Least)

Suzy Byrne
·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment
Lea DeLaria, right, and Chelsea Fairless will not be living happily ever after. (Photo: Getty Images)
Lea DeLaria, right, and Chelsea Fairless will not be living happily ever after. (Photo: Getty Images)

Orange Is the New Black actress Lea DeLaria and her fiancée, Chelsea Fairless, have “gone the way of David [Gest] and Liza [Minnelli].” No, they didn’t get into a fistfight in the back of a limousine on the way to rehab (just one classic Liza and David story), but they have ended their relationship after four and a half years.

Related: A Look Back at David Gest and Liza Minnelli’s Crazy Romance and Wedding

DeLaria, 58, and fashion editor Fairless, who is said to be in her late 20s or early 30s, called off their impending marriage in a joint statement Wednesday on Instagram alongside their delightfully wacky engagement photo, a spoof of Liza and David’s infamous wedding pic featuring them next to the most famous wedding attendants ever, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor. DeLaria, who plays Big Boo on the Netflix prison series, was Gest while Fairless got her Liz on. Of note: It’s also perhaps the first time a celebrity announced her breakup with her engagement photo.

Apparently this was an eerily prophetic choice of engagement photo as our relationship has since gone the way of David and Liza, with one small exception: our split is amicable. Please exclude us from the tragic and basic celebrity breakup narrative. We were happy together for four years and will remain in each other's lives. In fact, we look forward to finding new ways to torture each other. We would like to thank our incredible friends and families for their love and support ❤ xoxo Chelsea & @realleadelaria

A video posted by Chelsea Fairless ???? (@female_trouble) on Jan 11, 2017 at 10:12am PST

“Apparently this was an eerily prophetic choice of engagement photo as our relationship has since gone the way of David and Liza, with one small exception: our split is amicable,” said the statement. “Please exclude us from the tragic and basic celebrity breakup narrative. We were happy together for four years and will remain in each other’s lives. In fact, we look forward to finding new ways to torture each other. We would like to thank our incredible friends and families for their love and support. xoxo Chelsea & @realleadelaria.”

DeLaria’s breakup post is set to the song “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette, which makes it extra amazing, because it’s pure ’90s gold.

There seemed nothing “basic” about this couple, who were introduced by DeLaria’s co-star Emma Myles (meth head Leanne on the show) in 2012. (Myles and Fairless are high school BFFs.) The women became engaged at a 2015 Screen Actor’s Guild afterparty, where the actress was feeling so “filled with love” after OITNB won for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. When DeLaria shared their engagement news on Facebook, she noted they were getting hitched “despite their concerns about the patriarchal confines of marriage” and predicted that the wedding would be “the event of the season, or a total s*** show..”

Well, there will be no s*** show for DeLaria and Fairless, but feel free to relive Liza and David’s.