THE TRANSFORMATION OF JEFFREY TAMBOR
TRANSPARENT
sually when you hear the term “character actor” bandied about, it is often in the context of, “You know, it’s that one guy… What is his name? He was on that TV show.” That is not the case for Jeffrey Tambor, the actor who has left an indelible mark with his impressive body of work. After a string of television guest spots of the day during the ’70s—of which includes
by tim parks
his first small role on Kojak—Tambor went on to co-star on the 1979 Three’s Company spin off The Ropers as snobbish neighbor Jeffrey P. Brookes III. He has since peopled his nearly four decades old resume with a wealth of interesting characters that vacillate between film work in There’s Something About Mary and Girl, Interrupted, with voice work on animation projects including The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Archer. He garnered his most widely-known characters while on TV, enjoying successful stints as characters such as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show and of course, his most recognizable role as George Bluth, Sr. on Arrested Development. Currently, he is tackling the part of Mort Pfefferman in Amazon
Prime’s new original series Transparent. A father who is in the process of “coming out” to his three adult children (Gaby Hoffman, Jay Duplass and Amy Landecker) as the transgender woman Maura, all the while contending with an ex-wife (Judith Light). The show, created by Jill Soloway, is being heralded as one of the
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best to watch out for this fall season. It is also definitely a must-see binge-watch worthy entry in the online platform format that has sprung up in recent years. The Rage Monthly spoke with Tambor about what he calls a
“career defining role,” one that the actor deeply immersed himself in as he prepared to become Maura. As he explained, “It’s beautifully laid out; the map is quite
apparent in Jill’s sensational writing. But, I was also aided and instructed by Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst (two transgender consultants and associate producers for the show) and I read and I interviewed. Zack and Rhys took me under their wing, they made me up as Maura and they put together my wig and wardrobe. We went downstairs in the hotel and then out to a North Hollywood nightclub; that was my first field trip.” “I had great help and I remember every single second of it,”
Tambor reflected, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been as nervous as I was that day. I remember thinking as I was walking through the hotel lobby, ‘Don’t forget this, do not forget this.’ I tried to put as much of that into Maura as I could. For me, Jeffrey Tambor, the failsafe in Maura is that she, just like Jeffrey, is very, very new into this. A lot of Maura’s mistakes are Jeffrey’s mistakes and vice versa, because Maura is very young into her transition. I approached the role and said to them (producers) my politics are going to be in my perfor- mance; I want to make her as human as possible and as real, not a symbol, not a saint, but a person who is ‘coming out.’” After viewing the pilot episode on Amazon Prime, it is very
(l to r) amy landecker as sarah and jeffrey tambor as maura
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