The New York Times today posted an in depth profile on Jill Soloway, creator of the new Amazon original series Transparent, which looks at her personal background, her father coming out as transgender, the environment she fostered on set - including the hiring of several trans actors, crew members, and extras - and what she hopes the series can accomplish.
"Such precision about language, politics and etiquette is ever-present in the cultural milieu that Soloway entered when she sat down to create 'Transparent,' a dramatic comedy from Amazon Studios about a family whose father (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out as transgender. In an already pivotal moment for transgender people, who are emerging from culture’s margins, Soloway’s show tries to fast-forward past the incremental water-testing that network TV has historically applied to shifts like this, to skip the eggshell-walking and the audience-coddling. She wants to give her viewers a fully realized trans character.
We all struggle to become comfortable in the skin we were born into; we all try to uncover an identity beneath what was assigned to us at birth. That, above all else, is what Soloway’s show is about."