Jill Soloway & Jeffrey Tambor :: The 'Transparent' Experience

Funny story. I first spoke to writer/director Jill Soloway when
Transparent," her latest series, was just one of the many pilots Amazon launched for audiences to vote on. Halfway through that conversation, it dawned on me what the title really meant. I took it literally and was just thinking transparency; honesty, she's coming out. No, it's actually a clever wordplay, because "Transparent" really is about a trans parent.

The half-hour comedy/drama is set in Los Angeles and concerns Mort Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor), a political science professor with an ex-wife Shelley (Judith Light) and three adult children. The oldest Sarah (Amy Landecker) is seemingly happily married with children, but secretly longs for her gay girlfriend from college Tammy (Melora Hardin), also married with kids. Middle-child Josh (Jay Duplass) is a record producer with a thing for younger women; and the youngest Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) is a broke, would-be writer with a particularly active sex life.

Mort, though, has been living a lie his entire life and now must tell his family. With the help of a support group, Mort's able to come out. "My whole life, I've been dressing as a man," Maura says. "This is me," she tells Sarah dressed in a flowered pantsuit and in full make-up. By the end of the pilot, we see that Mort is actually Maura, a trans woman. "Transparent" was selected to become a series and the additional nine episodes will become available on September 26. From episode two on, Tambor's character is Maura.

'Hirstory'

The early reviews have been spectacularly good, many critics comparing it to such breakthrough Internet series as "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black." Others compare it to the best from HBO, which isn't surprising since Soloway helped Alan Ball develop "Six Feet Under" after reading her short story, "Courteney Cox's Asshole." (Told by Cox's personal assistant, it, according Wikipedia, tells of her duties, which includes "fielding press calls about a rumor that Cox bleaches her anus.")

Talking about "Transparent," Soloway began with a question: "We had to ask: Is she going to back and forth? It was something we learned as we were writing and asked our consultant of all things trans, Rhys Ernst. If so, is she Maura cross-dressed as Mort? If she goes back to dressing as Mort... these are the questions that the show asks, but we did come to the conclusion, that yeah, Jeffrey's playing the role of Maura. They call it the hirstory. It's not history, it's not herstory, it's a hirstory. 'Hir' is a word that refers to gender neutral."

Some surprises

After Amazon picked up "Transparent," Soloway assembled a writers' room to script the additional nine episodes. She said the fictional Pfefferman family dictated the story in surprising ways, including one daughter, the seemingly happily married-with-children Sarah, who comes out as a lesbian.

"The surprise is that Maura has her own trajectory, as do all of the kids," Soloway said. "There are certain things that I knew. I knew that I wanted Sarah to really make a quick move out of her marriage and claim the identity of being lesbian; have her move in with Tammy and be a Palisades power lesbian couple. I knew that was going to happen. We knew that Maura was going to move to West Hollywood and make some new friends, immerse herself in the queer community. So that's been really fun to watch. I feel like I'm in the audience watching these things evolve."

Maura's new West Hollywood friends help in her transition, and Tambor lit up talking about them. While still in production this summer, Tambor and Soloway took a break to do interviews, with Tambor still sporting Maura's nail polish.

"They are friends," Tambor said in an interview with Edge. "And they're role models. They've been through it. They've been through the pain and suffering. They understand. They're human and they lift Maura from the elemental - what to do and how to wear and how to deal with this - to the philosophical: How to be strong. How to be with your family. How to come out. It's quite interesting. I have a funny feeling that Mort had to say goodbye, and for Maura to appear and say hello to some wonderful, wonderful people. I think she's more connected than he was."

A new life

The pilot shows a quick glimpse at a support group to which Maura belongs. Tambor continued to describe some of the new friends in Maura's life. "She meets Davina (Alexandra Billings) and her friends at the LGBT center," he continued. "She's really having a good time. She's going out and having cocktails. She's going to be in a talent show that we're filming this week, 'Trans Got Talent.' I would say that Maura is having the time of her life. She's really having fun - meeting people and talking to people, having a little trouble with the neighbors, which you'll see happens. It's very interesting."

During a panel session with the Television Critics Association this summer, Tambor and Soloway shared more information about "Transparent." For example, Tambor said that Maura is the most transforming role he's ever played in his career. More than even his other memorable characters: Hank Kingsley on "The Larry Sanders Show" and George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on "Arrested Development."

"Maura is very real to me and very real to all of us," he continued. "Certainly different [from other roles]. Certainly more intriguing than anything I've had in a very, very long time. You develop a technique of working all your life and all of a sudden you land a role that you have to develop another technique, which is very scary: how to play something as Maura experiences it, so to have something like this happen at 70 is a revelation for me."

A complicated decision

Soloway also told the Television Critics about her decision to cast a male actor as Maura. "It's super complicated because I think, ideally, this should be a transwoman who would have the years of experience, love, and amazingness (that would fit the part)" she said on the panel. "But that's really not ideal because Maura hasn't transitioned yet when we meet her. We are actually meeting someone who is just beginning to transition. So it's very complicated about whether a woman, man, transwoman or transman, plays this role. Luckily, I didn't really have to think about it because, from the very moment that I had the idea in my head, Jeffrey was Maura. Jeffrey was Mort to become Maura. There was never anybody else. It just was."

Likewise, the story of "Transparent" could have equally been a mother transitioning into a man. Soloway explained why she chose a father becoming a woman. "I think, as a feminist, I think a lot about how, as a culture, there are patriarchal wounds and matriarchal wounds," she told the TCA.

"I think a lot about what a heroine's journey means for women and what it means to explore the feminine within the feminist, what it means to honor the feminine. And I think - mythologically, politically and spiritually - about a missing father. The idea of a wounded father replaced by a blossoming femininity. It just felt like a really, really, fertile place for drama and for comedy. And transness suddenly is really in the zeitgeist in a great way that makes us feel like we are really pointing in the right direction. The ideas about gender freedom that the show promotes are really about freedom, transitioning and transcendence. Becoming whoever you want to be outside of the idea of sexuality or gender."

A veteran writer of "Six Feet Under," "United States of Tara" and "How to Make It in America," Soloway developed "Transparent" on her own. "It was one of those ideas that just came to me fully formed," she told the TCA. "I love subverting the trope, the Disney trope of a parent who dies in the first five minutes and, again, 'Six Feet Under,' the dad dying in the first five minutes. I just had the thought of what would happen if a parent died because a new parent was born? What would it mean to mourn a parent while you are getting to meet a new one? It's this great mythological structure, a loss of a parent; and I just thought, subvert it with the loss and a birth at the same time."

"Transparent" will be a landmark show simply because it is the first of its kind on the air, but while we discuss the more serious relevance of its subject, Tambor also wanted to remind audiences that it is a comedy. "By the way," he added, "have I mentioned that this show is funny?"

The pilot for "Transparent" is available on Amazon now. The complete first season is available September 26, 2014