How Caitlyn Jenner Helped ‘Transparent’ Become a Family Show
Jeffrey Tambor didn’t know how to ask for breasts. As he was preparing for a scene for the TV series Transparent — in which his transgender character Maura Pfefferman is asked by a doctor whether she wants surgery — he realized his character didn’t know how to ask either.
“The sequence in the new season where I’m talking back and forth with the doctor about gender reassignment … that one got to me,” says the Emmy-winning actor, reclining in the corner of a couch in a SoHo hotel room. “There was something about the ordinariness of it that was chilling to me, because these are just simple words, but they have such fathoms. In their ordinariness, you get the whole deal. That’s what I like about the show.”
When Transparent premiered last year and quickly became Amazon‘s breakout hit – earning Emmys for Tambor and its creator, Jill Soloway, as well as the Golden Globe and GLAAD Media Award both for Best Comedy Series – it presented LGBTQ issues in a way that could appeal to anyone since, at its heart, it’s about a family. When Maura told her adult children that she was transitioning, each struggled to adapt to the change, albeit in a supportive way. With the show’s second season, which premieres in full on Friday, December 11th, Soloway and her writers have made the Pfefferman clan as a whole the series’ centerpiece. That they’ve broadened the show’s scope without sacrificing any of the show’s carefully constructed social messages or character is nothing short of a miracle.
The season begins with a wedding – the perfect setting for family dysfunction – and within the half-hour, each character’s crisis comes into focus. Eldest Pfefferman daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) has left her husband and kids behind for a constricting relationship with her college love Tammy (Melora Hardin). Son Josh (Jay Duplass) has fallen for a rabbi (Kathryn Hahn) but their love strains when his surprise teenage son shows up. Younger daughter Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) remains a wandering spirit despite pursuing Josh’s ex (Carrie Brownstein). And Maura, who is finally beginning to know herself at age 71, navigates her feelings for ex-wife Shelly (Judith Light) and a surprise, upending role by Anjelica Huston.
The Pfeffermans all want happiness, but none of them will make the sacrifices necessary to get there. That innate familial stubbornness sets up the intricately woven generational odyssey that showrunner Soloway, who previously worked on offbeat family-driven shows like Six Feet Under and United States of Tara, promised when she first described Transparent as a dark comedy about a clan with “boundary issues.” The shift in focus, she says, came in part from an interesting inspiration: Caitlyn Jenner.