Funny, Dirty, Sad: The 'Holy Trinity' For 'Transparent' Creator Jill Soloway

Transcript

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross. The Amazon series "Transparent" has been nominated for two Golden Globes - one for best comedy TV series and another for its star Jeffrey Tambor as best actor. This is the first time that an Amazon original series has been nominated for the Golden Globes.

In "Transparent," which launched earlier this year, Tambor plays a 70-year-old father who comes out to his three adult children as a transgender woman and begins a new life transitioning from male to female, from Mort to Maura. The series also follows Maura's three self-absorbed adult children, all of whom are dealing with their own issues relating to identity and sexuality, while trying to process that their parent has had a secret life.

The creator of "Transparent" is our next guest, Jill Soloway. The series is based in part on her experiences with her own parent who came out as a trans-woman a few years ago. Soloway also has been a writer and producer on HBO's "Six Feet Under" and Showtime's "United States Of Tara."

Terry Gross spoke with Jill Soloway earlier this year. Here's a scene from the second episode in which Jeffrey Tambor's character is forced to reveal the truth after coming home in women's clothes not realizing that his older daughter Sarah would be in the house. Tambor's character is shocked to see Sarah, who is married with two children, kissing her old college girlfriend. Sarah is shocked by how her father looks. He tries to explain.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRANSPARENT")

JEFFREY TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) So I have something to tell you.

MELORA HARDIN: (As Tammy Cashman) OK. So do you guys - you want me to leave?

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) Yes, please.

AMY LANDECKER: (As Sarah Pfefferman) No, please.

HARDIN: (As Tammy Cashman) Oh, OK.

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) You can stay. It's fine.

LANDECKER: (As Sarah Pfefferman) Please stay.

HARDIN: (As Tammy Cashman) OK, yeah, sure.

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) So yes, when I was a kid - ever since I was five, I felt that something was not right, and I couldn't tell anybody about my feminine side. It was a different time, you know, very different time. And, pretty girl, I just - I had to keep all those feelings to myself.

LANDECKER: (As Sarah Pfefferman) Dad.

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) No, no, no, let me do this. It's - please, God, let me do this. People led secret lives. And people led very lonely lives. And then, of course, the Internet was invented.

HARDIN: (As Tammy Cashman) The Internet - can't hate on that Internet. It's magic.

LANDECKER: (As Sarah Pfefferman) I'm sorry. I'm sorry, dad. I'm sorry. I'm just trying - can you just help me out here? Are you saying that you're going to start dressing up like a lady all the time?

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) No, honey, all my life - my whole life I've been dressing up like a man. This is me.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

Jill Soloway, welcome to FRESH AIR. Why did you want the main character in "Transparent" to be an older man in his 70s - or an older woman, I should say? But a trans-woman - but a trans-woman who isn't coming out until her 70s. So she's lived more than 69 years as a man.

JILL SOLOWAY: Right. Well, the story's personal. My own parent came out around the age of 75. And pretty shortly after they came out, I got a very strong feeling that this was going to be my creative destiny. I was going to create this show. Older transitioners are really, I think, the next group of people that we can get introduced to. I think people, you know, know Laverne Cox now and Janet Mock. There's also this younger generation of transfolk who are really political and who have access to great medical care from early on.

Older transitioners are a whole different group of people. Because of the way that society has only recently begun to evolve, a lot of older transitioners had to live a life of secrecy. Many of them are cross-dressers - secret cross-dressers. It just felt like the most perfect opportunity to tell a story about secrets, about boundaries, legacy, gender, family, all the things I'm obsessed with.

GROSS: Let's hear another scene, and this is from the first episode of "Transparent." And the parent who has been known as a father until now is at a transgender support group. He - she hasn't yet come out to her children, and she knows she needs to. She knows she wants to. She was going to. She had all three adult children over to dinner and was preparing to tell them, and said I have something to tell you. And they all assumed that, oh, no, dad has cancer, dad's going to tell us - and they got off onto such a sidetrack, he just gave up. And he didn't tell them, and he got very frustrated - she didn't tell them and got very frustrated.

SOLOWAY: There you go. I was going to correct you.

GROSS: So after trying and failing to come out to her children, Maura, played by Jeffrey Tambor, is speaking to a transgender support group about how frustrating it's been to not be able to go through with it and actually tell her children.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRANSPARENT")

TAMBOR: (As Maura Pfefferman) One more thing. I made a commitment here last week that I was going to come out to my kids, and I didn't do it because it just wasn't time, you know? But I will, and it will be soon. I promise you. I promise you. I promise you. They are so selfish. I don't know how it is I raised three people who cannot see beyond themselves.

GROSS: And at that point in the series, episode one, I thought he is so right. These children are so selfish.

SOLOWAY: You thought she is so - she is so right (laughter).

GROSS: She is so right, yes. You know, these children are so selfish, and you know, you learn more about them and how they got that way as the episodes go on. But speaking for myself, I was so disappointed that they didn't have more empathy for him and what he was trying to tell them. Why did you make the children that way?

SOLOWAY: Well, I didn't - I've never really felt like I've made the children a certain way. I don't really write these characters or do things with them. I feel more when I'm writing sort of like I'm a court stenographer and I'm listening to these characters. I feel like the kids, like Sarah, Josh and Ali, exist out in the world as these souls. And when I write, I kind of just listen to them. So it's not my fault that they're jerks.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: OK.

SOLOWAY: They just - there are certain large shapes to the show that came to me very quickly. You know, what you're seeing in that first scene is them at their worst. And, you know, as things evolve over five seasons, hopefully this will be a journey of healing and of becoming and of learning and growing and experimenting and loving. And, yeah, we had to start with people who had a lot to learn.

GROSS: So we just heard the Jeffrey Tambor character talking about how difficult it's been to come out to her children as trans. You actually experienced this from the point of view of being a child whose father, it turned out, was trans. You'd always thought of...

SOLOWAY: Whose parent.

GROSS: No, I'm saying this intentionally.

SOLOWAY: OK (laughter).

GROSS: You thought of him as your father. He was your father in your mind, and then you found out that in his mind, he's been a woman. And he's been posing as a man but he's felt - but she's felt like a woman. How old were you when you learned the truth about your parent?

SOLOWAY: I think I was maybe 46.

GROSS: So what was your first reaction when you were told?

SOLOWAY: Honestly, you know, I've been so obsessed with things like gender, sexuality, feminism, the feminine. And I think for a while there I used to sort of ask myself, either what am I running for, or what am I running from? I wasn't sure (laughter). I really was in some ways relieved that I thought, oh, this is what - this is what I have not known. There were just so many missing pieces to a journey that felt like a relief.

The first things that, you know, of course I communicated to my parent were love, and I love you unconditionally, and I'm so proud of you, and this is so brave of you and tell me more. Yeah, it was interesting, I think, to grow up in a family with this really huge missing piece and not know what that piece is. It's sort like you're feeling around in a dark room. It's like the elephant in the room, but all the lights are off. So you're feeling around, and you're feeling this quite huge thing. And it was just - it was an amazing relief for the lights to go on.

GROSS: So when your parent came out as a trans-woman, did she want to take hormones? Was she interested in surgery? Or was just being able to dress and behave like she wanted to sufficient in terms of expressing her true self?

SOLOWAY: Yeah, my parent is on their own journey, and I think I'd rather just, you know, let them speak to their journey. You know, they're a private person. I think this has already been an incredibly exposing journey that...

GROSS: What - your show has been an incredibly exposing journey?

SOLOWAY: I mean, can you imagine? Can you imagine coming out?

GROSS: No, no, it's like you finally come out to your kid after, like, decades, you come out as trans and it's like, you immediately turn around and do a show about it.

SOLOWAY: It's horrible, honestly. I mean...

GROSS: (Laughter) Did you ask your parent for approval?

SOLOWAY: I did tell my parent I was writing a show about a family and that there was going to be a trans-parent. But when you work in Hollywood, as I have, you never think anything's going to happen. I've been writing pilots that haven't gotten made, sometimes two or three a year for 10 years. And a lot of times, they were based on people. And in the early days I would say, like, hey, just so you know, I have a character who has your name and acts like you. And they would be like, oh, I better read it. And then you'd go through all this stuff trying to get people OK with the fact that you're using them in your writing, and then it would never even be on the air. And you just wasted a whole bunch of time and, you know, added a bunch of, you know, drama to your relationship...

GROSS: Right.

SOLOWAY: ...With the person feeling like, oh, you're writing about me - it never happened, you know. It never happened. This is my first pilot that I've ever gotten made. So I didn't really want to talk about it too much until I knew that it was going to happen.

GROSS: So by the time you told your parent, it was already a done deal (laughter). Is that what I'm hearing?

SOLOWAY: I mean, you know what? I'm so lucky that my parent has been so excited and lovely and loving about having to speed up their journey so that this story can happen. I mean, the thing I tell my parent and my sister and my mother, all of us who feel like, wow, this is really personal. I mean, even though the show is totally fictional, there are so many things about it that feel like they speak to parts of our family. But I've already met so many people who've told me that they've been able to use the show to come out to their kids. It's bigger than us.

BIANCULLI: "Transparent" creator Jill Soloway speaking to Terry Gross earlier this year. More after a break, this is FRESH AIR.

(MUSIC)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's conversation from earlier this year with Jill Soloway, creator of the Amazon series "Transparent." It just received two Golden Globe nominations, the first ever earned by the Amazon's streaming service.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: Jill Soloway will be back in the second half of the show. She created the Amazon original series "Transparent." The entire first season is available on Amazon. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

GROSS: The family in "Transparent" is Jewish. It's the Pfefferman family. And one of the characters in "Transparent" is a woman who's a rabbi. I was reading some interviews with you. And one of the comments you made was that watching Lena Dunham's series "Girls" - I'll quote you, you said, (quote) "it was angering for me at first because I had spent decades hiding unlikable, unattractive, Jewish girls in likable, attractive, non-Jewish actors and characters." Please explain.

SOLOWAY: Well, I think there's some old adage like, you know, write Jewish, cast British. Have you ever heard that?

GROSS: No (laughter).

SOLOWAY: Yeah, that was - that was what we were taught the old-school TV writers were doing, which is, you know, there's a writers' room filled with these kind of Borscht Belty Jewish guys, you know? And TV shows like "Friends" have a lot of pretty girls. And so, yeah, that's the adage that you - that you write from that place of the pain and the vulnerability and the sadness and the comedy of Jewishness, but you have people who look good say the words.

Look good, that's not right (laughter).

GROSS: Unlike Jews.

(LAUGHTER)

SOLOWAY: I guess I should change that description.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Unlike Jews, who never look good.

(LAUGHTER)

SOLOWAY: That's horrible.

GROSS: You made your bed.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Now, you must sleep in it.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So how is it different to write about Jewish characters?

SOLOWAY: Well, I don't know. They're - I mean, God, I could talk for a few hours about what Jewish people are like, but, you know, I want to tell the truth. I want to tell the truth in every detail. I want to - you know, there's a scene at 10, which is - hopefully won't be a spoiler to say that the whole family's sitting around at the end of a shiva, and everybody carries the sort of, you know, big tinfoil serving things to the dining room table. And then everybody sits around. They take the big - they take the big serving spoons and just kind of feed themselves and each other. Shelly, you know, tastes the coleslaw. Maura wants a bite. Shelly feeds her a bite. You know, I don't know if that's Jewish or not, but to me, that's just, like, the Jewey-est thing you can do after everybody leaves a party is just put all the food in the center of table and just go at it shtetl style.

Yeah, I just - I just love the comedy, you know, food and flesh and that kind of warm feeling, that boundary - there's something boundary-less, I think, about a Jewish family that - that is really funny to me.

GROSS: So your sister is a writer on "Transparent." There are three adult siblings in the series and they all have kind of secrets in their past and skeletons in their closet that they kind of like to pull out and show to each other, you know? Just, like, they're pretty good at pushing each other's buttons and bringing up...

SOLOWAY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Things from the siblings' past that is really kind of, like, painful or embarrassing. And is that reflected in your relationship with your sister who's also your fellow writer on the show?

SOLOWAY: Faith and I are pretty - actually, I think the Pfeffermans are a lot more kind of feisty than Faith and I. My sister and I really, I think, mostly make each other laugh and protect each other. And yeah, I wouldn't - I mean, the siblings are in some ways me and Faith because Faith is my older sister. She's a lesbian.

I would say in my 20s, I was probably sort of like Ali. And then in many ways Faith is like Ali - reminds me of her - you know, Faith's backpack, Faith's wallet. We used all of the details of Faith physically to be Ali, and I'm a lot more like Sarah - Silver Lake mom, kids. And we both really feel a lot of Josh in both of us. I feel a lot like Josh. I really relate to Josh a lot. But, you know, Faith and I as people, we're nowhere near - we're nowhere near as pokey as the Pfeffermans are with each other. We're pretty chill with each other.

GROSS: How did "Transparent" end up on Amazon as opposed to say HBO, where you worked on the show "Six Feet Under," or Showtime, where you were the show runner for "United States Of Tara?"

SOLOWAY: Yeah, I think - I think when I, you know, had that moment in my head, you know, this is my TV show, I'm going to write it. I think in my head it was HBO or Showtime for sure. And the people at HBO did say yes, we love it, of course we'll buy it. Just so you know, we're going to develop it. We're going to work on it. And it might take years before it gets on the air and of course, it may not even get on the air.

And Amazon said we want this, we'll buy it, we're going to know in a couple of weeks if we're going to shoot it. Once we shoot it, it's going to be aired. They have a process where everybody sees the pilots. And if you have a pilot at HBO or at Showtime, if they decide they're not sure about it, nobody ever sees it. And they also own it forever. And I couldn't stand the thought of this thing that was, like, my one big story - I'm finally ready guys, OK, this is what I'm meant to do. If it doesn't rise up the ladder at HBO the way it should, it belongs to them forever.

So Amazon's kind of nimbleness with the deal, and then the fact that, you know, I could potentially get it back if need be if they didn't buy it - I could turn it into a movie. There was all kinds of openness to the process that made me feel that I was safe there.

GROSS: So sexuality has, you know, been a subject for you even in the movie that you made - the independent film "Afternoon Delight." Can you talk about why sexuality has been an important subject for you in your work, or is it purely intellectual?

SOLOWAY: Oh, it's 100 percent intellectual. Yeah, I'm not interested in sex at all, just the idea of sex.

(LAUGHTER)

SOLOWAY: I don't know, you know, it's just like I think of my work as this kind of holy trinity - funny, dirty, sad. It's...

GROSS: Oh, OK.

SOLOWAY: ...Really easy to do funny. You get a lot of funny people in a room, the show's funny. And it's really easy to do sad, you know? You just kind of put on some sad music and write dramatically. Everybody can do that. It's really hard to get dirty right. There's a lot of porn, which is really meant for commercial reasons, and then there's, you know, all of the kinds of filters that we understand about filming sex because it's usually filmed by men. So yeah, I take it as this kind of - it's my rallying cry. It's part of the - to me it's part of the toolbox of undoing some of the ways in which women see themselves being seen to write about sexuality. I mean, it's also interesting from trying to get people to go you have to watch the show.

GROSS: Jill Soloway, thank you so much for talking with us.

SOLOWAY: Thank you.

BIANCULLI: Jill Soloway, creator of "Transparent," speaking to Terry Gross earlier this year. The Amazon streaming series just earned two Golden Globe nominations, one for best comedy series and the other for its leading actor, Jeffrey Tambor. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.