In Amazon’s ‘Transparent,’ a heroine evolves further still
On the set of “Transparent,” a handful of actors dressed for a flashback scene on a 1930s ocean liner — cloche hats, woolen jackets, long skirts — crowd together on benches in a wooden container perched atop a gimbal, a device that can simulate the rolling of a ship. Sitting cross-legged on a long table a few yards away, director Jill Soloway, who created this Amazon series, quietly throws out a few suggestions to the gently swaying actors.
At first glance, the set, located in two soundstages on the Paramount Pictures lot here, feels like any other: Crew members in baggy shorts and sneakers mill around; writers and producers huddle in front of monitors.
But anyone familiar with the show — one that for the first time put a richly drawn transgender character at the center of the action — is aware that “Transparent” is anything but business as usual.
From the moment in early 2014 that Soloway got the green light from Amazon to write a full first season — which detailed the transition of Mort Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor) to Maura, and its effect on her already neurotic family — Soloway, the series’ showrunner, sought to hire transgender and gender nonconforming staff wherever possible. (Gender nonconforming describes people who depart from conventional expectations of masculinity and femininity.) But when Amazon ordered a second season just after the first one was streamed in October 2014 to glowing reviews, Soloway, emboldened by her newfound job security, felt she needed to try harder when it came to increasing the pool of applicants.
Her own “affirmative action program” is how she described it. “We just did it DIY,” Soloway said. “It was like reaching off of a boat and just grabbing any hand you could get and pulling them onto the boat. It was: ‘Who’s trans? What can they do? What department do they want experience in? Let’s get them in wardrobe. Let’s get them in hair and makeup. Let’s get them in the camera department. Let’s get them in the production office.’”
Last year, it was the hand of acclaimed novelist Ali Liebegott that Soloway grabbed. Liebegott, who identifies as gender nonconforming, wrote an episode of “Transparent” and also appears on the show as Tiffany the security guard. This season, Soloway hired Silas Howard, who is trans, to direct an episode. She also wanted a transgender woman in the writer’s room.
To that end, she led a weeklong workshop in Santa Barbara, California, teaching the basics of writing for television to a half-dozen transgender women and collaborating with them on a pilot script, one tinged with supernatural elements and set in a house of ill repute. A week later, one of the students, Our Lady J, a classical pianist, singer-songwriter and cabaret performer, received a phone call from Soloway offering her a spot on the “Transparent” writing staff.
Sitting at a table on one of the show’s kitchen sets, Our Lady J — who was born into a conservative Christian family in a tiny town in Pennsylvania — called the “Transparent” experience “a dream job, therapeutically.” “In the morning, I know I wake up with more confidence knowing that people are becoming more aware of our struggle and doing things about it to remove the difficulties,” she said. “To be part of a show that is really based on alleviating pain within the community? I feel really proud.”
Roughly four years ago, when a parent of Soloway’s came out to her as transgender, she knew she had the seeds of a funny, poignant series. But from the beginning she felt that for the show to work, Maura needed to be the moral center; bickering, petulance and impulse-control problems would be assigned to her three grown children.
Of his character’s evolution in the second season, Tambor says, “She’s not St. Maura anymore; we get to see some of her foibles,” which widens its scope to include the aforementioned flashbacks, which trace Maura’s ancestors’ emigration from Berlin to Los Angeles as well as the ripple effect she has on the Pfefferman family.
“I think Season 1 was all about the revelation,” Soloway said. “Who knows? Who is going to find out? What are they going to think? Now everyone knows. Someone who is trans once said that when a person transitions, the entire family has to transition. You were somebody in relation to the secret. Now the secret is gone, so each person becomes somebody new.”
Tambor’s acclaimed portrayal of a 70-something engaged in the sometimes thrilling, sometimes scary process of restarting life has won him many awards, including a Golden Globe and an Emmy. That said, he is aware that his casting offended many trans activists and their supporters.
“I’m a cisgender man playing this role, and that weighs on me,” Tambor said, using the term for someone who is not transgender. Every day he spends on the “Transparent” set, he said, is filled with questions directed at, for example, Rhys Ernst and Zachary Drucker, both consultants on trans issues, and Alexandra Billings and Trace Lysette, who play Maura’s roommates this year. “I have to do it right. So it’s everything from ‘How would you administer that shot?’ to picking up on lingo and behavior.”
Soloway frequently seizes the opportunity, be it a podcast appearance or an awards acceptance speech, to spread the word about transgender equality while simultaneously aware that she’s a self-appointed spokeswoman. “I am definitely carrying the mantle of being a trans activist — which can be awkward,” Soloway said. “I’m not trans. I’m just the daughter of a trans person. And I know there are people in the trans community who probably wonder how I’ve become a mouthpiece.”
Sometimes Soloway’s audience is no bigger than a group of extras hired to be in the background on “Transparent.” “One thing that’s a tradition (in Hollywood) is that everybody gets treated well but the extras,” said Soloway, who often likes to take time out before shooting a scene filled with extras by delivering a mood-elevating speech, welcoming them to the set and thanking them for their participation.
Sometimes she’ll talk about the message she hopes that her series spreads.
“I’ll talk about my parent coming out and how I want it to be safer for my parent to walk out of her apartment building or to be in an elevator with strangers or hail a cab,” she said. “I talk about my goal of trying to make the world safer for all trans people. If you had a child, parent, brother or sister who felt uncomfortable in the world, and you realized that you could use the media to change that, wouldn’t you? And you know what? It’s really working.”