Jeffrey Tambor and the "Transparent" cast and crew are shooting the second season of the hit show, which has garnered 11 Emmy nominations; a scene in the postponed season finale of "Mr. Robot" rekindles the debate over gun violence on television.
Jeffrey Tambor cried when he heard the first review for 'Transparent'
Until a little show called "Transparent" came along, Jeffrey Tambor was primarily known for his roles on "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Arrested Development."
But "Transparent," a show about a retired father of three transitioning to life as a woman, has garnered critical and commercial success on the way to 11 Emmy nominations, including an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series nod for Tambor.
When we talked with Tambor on the set of "Transparent," we asked him about the conversations he's had with strangers about his role on the show, the most difficult scene he had to shoot during the show's first season and what it was like to find the character of Maura for the first time.
Interview Highlights:
I want to hear about your initial conversations with Jill about this part.
There were no initial conversations, because she kept trying to talk and I kept saying, "I'm in! I'm in! I'm in!" I was so taken with this, and my wonderful agents, Leslie Siebert and Joannie Burstein, sent me this script, and I read it and went, "Oh, this is really special."
And Jill is really special in her authenticity, her originality, and that humor. It's very reminiscent of the Tambor humor, I grew up in that humor. I think it's a little glib to say "West Coast Jewish," but I know these people. And you don't turn down Lear — this is a great role. It's so enriched my life.
There are certain measures of validation that most people in Hollywood take, be they awards or ratings, but I'm curious about the people that you have random conversations with, people that might come up to you on the street and talk about how this show has affected them. Are there certain kinds of conversations that you remember that are meaningful and prove that "Transparent" is accomplishing what Jill intended?
This is a little banal, but it's so emblematic of what you're asking. I was on a plane and this man started to walk toward me, in a very bespoke suit and silver hair, with much watch, much ring, everything. He's coming toward me and I think, Oh, here we go.
He extended his hand and he said, "I want to thank you for introducing me to a subject I had no idea about." I can tell you much more emotional stories of people who have cried, but that story seems to be the one that shows that this show is going over to a community that doesn't know about this, and that access really excites me.
Was there one scene from the first season that was harder to do than others? What kind of physical, sexual, or personal intimacy might it have involved?
The hardest scene that I had to do last year was when I had to come out — or, Maura had to come out — to Sarah. I was throw-up nervous. I mean, when they knocked on the door to my dressing room, I all but threw up. I was really nervous, not because I wanted all the praise, but because I wanted to do it right. Because lives are at stake, and integrity's at stake, and there's a community that needs for me to do that right.
Let me tell you an NPR story. We were driving my son Gabriel, who's 10, up to a Boy Scout thing in upper New York. We're driving, and all of a sudden the NPR review for the episode came out. I'm going to cry. I remember looking in the rearview mirror and Gabriel had a big, big smile on his face, and we had a big, big proud moment. You're going to cry too. Isn't that something? What a moment. And that's how things have gone with this show — everything just clicks. I'm looking around the table today, going, That's the perfect casting.
Were you able to find part of Maura through your own life experiences or yourself? How do those things intersect?
I believe that Maura is like an old friend and she just keeps coming. I'm very comfortable, and she keeps telling me what to do. The first night that we dressed up was the first time that I met Maura, and I met her right in the looking glass.
There she was, and she looked exactly like what I thought she was. Not pretty, just... it was something where I said, "There you are." And always, when I come to L.A., I go to that particular hotel room. I call it the Maura suite. That's where Maura was invented.
We went out dancing at a club in West Hollywood and I just wanted to try it on. I even took her shopping to Gelson's, of all places. I wanted to take her shopping, and I said, "Would she dress up?" It was great, but yeah, I got the stares and I got "clocked," as they say.
What does "clocked" mean?
"Clocked" means someone sees you for being transgender. I didn't know if I was clocked as being Maura or clocked as Jeffrey Tambor, but I went, Don't ever forget that, and don't ever forget how nervous you are.
You have five children, and I assume most, if not all, have seen the show. Have any of them said if they see any of their dad in Maura?
I'm going to bend that a bit. Evie, my youngest daughter who's now 8 1/2, came to the set. She's come to the set twice and loves it, but the first time she came to the set, my wife and I were kind of going, "Hmmm, well, Daddy is..." And she said, "Daddy, I get it. Your character is more comfortable as a woman."
So there it is, from the mouth of babes — they get it. She came to the set and I think I'm the only actor recently who's had a mani-pedi with his daughter in the makeup trailer. Do they get all of it? Not quite, but they get the human part of it. And they have no problem with it!
I don't take off my nail polish when I go home because I'm too lazy, and they're fine with it. Maybe the checkout at the grocery store's not so great with it, but they're fine with it. The distrust, the phobias, those are learned, those are taught. But the natural grace is to understand and to love.
What is the TV industry's responsibility when it comes to depictions of violence?
The USA Network postponed Wednesday night’s scheduled season one finale of its hit series, “Mr. Robot," because the episode included a live shooting that was similar to the fatal shooting of two TV journalists that took place yesterday morning in Virginia.
That got us thinking about the broader issue of violence on television. There have been many studies that address not only the preponderance of violence on TV, but also how those images affect viewers. The studies typically find that people who watch violent entertainment become emotionally desensitized — and might even imitate the aggressive behavior they see.
There have been calls in the past to limit TV shows with violent content to those airing later at night. But thanks to technology and streaming services, people can watch TV whenever they want, so those limits don’t apply.
Where do things stand today with depictions of gun violence on television?
For more on this issue, we talked with Jim Steyer, the CEO of the watchdog group Common Sense Media, and Andy Greenwald, who covers TV for Grantland and the Hollywood Prospectus podcast.
Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media
What do you think the media's responsibility when it comes to depictions of violence?
Fundamentally, the media industry broadly defined and the entertainment industry in particular, need to be far more accountable to society when it comes to the depiction of violence, both in the content of the depictions and the ways in which they're distributed.
In the era of Netflix, Hulu, and streaming video, it's any place, any time, so the accountability industry is absolutely paramount, and while the "Mr. Robot" decision by USA Network is actually a heartening one and an example of industry accountability, we don't see a whole lot of that. The industry should be far more vigilant, but they aren't oftentimes because violence sells. That's the crux of the problem.
People who have been to your site, Common Sense Media, know that you do your own, very specific ratings about content. How does the TV industry's own ratings system work? Do you think it's effective, and can it be improved?
The TV ratings system is pretty pathetic and, in our experience, nobody uses it. It was largely designed back in the late 90s as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and in our experience it's very, very weak. It's far less effective than the MPAA system for movies.
That being said, it's tough to be a parent in a 24/7 media environment, so even if there are good ratings available to you, you have to be vigilant. That's also why the industry has to be far more accountable — the problem with violence in our society is very real.
You can't blame only the media for it, because that wouldn't be fair, but the research is also clear that there's a strong correlation between media violence and the epidemic of violence that we see in our society. So media is part of the problem, but it can also be part of the solution.
Your organization touts that it believes in "sanity, not censorship." So what does that actually mean?
We believe in free expression and we believe that producers, whether in Hollywood or any place in the world, have the right to create whatever content they want. The issues are when that is aired, how it's distributed, and to which audiences it's distributed. We believe that you need to give all viewers and all consumers as much information as possible at or before the point of decision. That is sanity, not censorship.
Censorship would be to simply say, "You can't make that kind of programming." Under the old systems of law, you were allowed to do time, place, and manner restrictions, but in a 24/7 streaming media environment that we have now, it's pretty tough. So sanity means, Give the consumer the information before they make their decision, as opposed to a heavy-handed government way to try to regulate it, which quite honestly is not going to happen in 2015 and beyond.
Andy Greenwald, writer for Grantland
We know that you're a big fan of "Mr. Robot" — in fact, you recommended it to us the last time you were on the show — so what did you make of USA's decision to postpone the airing of the finale last night?
I spent the first part of Wednesday actually writing a piece on the "Mr. Robot" finale, which I'd watched Tuesday night, and in it I'd noted that the show had this uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist. I was referring mostly to its references to things like hacking personal information that might be embarrassing to people, or unsettled foreign economies.
I also mentioned that there was an on-camera shooting in the finale, and of course that has real, tragic resonance now. I was surprised that USA pulled the episode when they did, but ultimately I think they did make the right decision.
Do you think that episode will be re-edited? Is it so close to the actual event that they'll have to come up with a new, reshot ending?
Well, it's important to note that the scene in question is not entirely central to the main A-Plot of the finale. There's absolutely a way where it could be lightly edited without losing its intent or its impact, but that said, I've received no official word from anyone. No one at USA's speaking on the record, but I've been given some indication that the preference is not to edit it at all. It'll air in the original version, just a week later.
A couple years ago, there was a movie called "Gangster Squad," and in a preliminary edit of that film there was a shooting inside a movie theater. After the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, they cut that scene and reshot it completely. In the TV world, is there another example that you can think of where a TV network pulled or edited an episode as a response to something that happened in real life?
There are actually two prominent examples of this happening in TV. In 1999, an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which centered on violence at a school, was pulled due to the Columbine shooting.
And then, just two years ago in 2013, the fourth episode from the first season of "Hannibal" was pulled months after the Sandy Hook shooting at the request of the show's showrunner, Bryan Fuller. He felt that some of the themes of the episode, while not specifically related to anything like what happened at Sandy Hook, were too similar in tone.
You're somebody who watches television for a living, so you consume a lot of TV. Just anecdotally and personally, over the last five years have you noticed that the amount of violence has gone up? Stayed the same? Gone down? What's your personal take?
I would say there's always been a great deal of violence on television, often in some of the most surprising places. For example, CBS has a reputation for being the most old-fashioned network, but to watch it is to watch a pretty hideous orgy of murder and death on its endless parade of procedurals.
I think that what's changed over the past few years is the extremity of what's shown on television — violence has always been there, but the specificity and often the emotional baggage that comes along with it has certainly increased.
I think that's partly to do with the growing up of television's storytelling capabilities and what the audience has come to expect, but also from the fact that everything's time-shifted now, so that people feel a little bit free to broadcast things they might not otherwise do at the original broadcast time because they're honestly just assuming that everyone's going to watch it later.
From talking with showrunners and people who work in television, what kind of conversations are they having about violence on television? Or is it Wild Wild West, anything goes right now?
I think that each show and each showrunner determines their level of comfort on their own, within the conversations they have in their writers rooms and with their networks. I think it's worth noting that, for me, as much as the pulling of the episode of "Mr. Robot" was out of respect to those affected by the awful tragedy in Virginia, I also think that it was a reasonable and smart decision for the show itself.
Honestly, though the scene itself was quite different than what occurred in Virginia, there was almost no way for it not to be viewed as responsive if it had aired at its original time. I think it would be good to give a little distance, so that the reality and the art can each stand on their own.