Transparent will end after fifth season, Jeffrey Tambor discusses his firing
Tambor has been accused of sexual harassment by two transgender actresses on the show
Jeffrey Tambor has opened up about his firing from Amazon’s Transparent, in his first sit-down interview since accusations of sexual harassment were levied against the actor last year.
Reports emerged in November that Tambor had allegedly harassed two transgender actresses on the set of the groundbreaking show, in which he starred as transgender woman Maura Pfefferman.
Trace Lysette accused Tambor of making lewd remarks and thrusting his penis against her while on set, while Tambor’s former assistant and actress Van Barnes claimed Tambor propositioned and groped her. Tambor refuted both women’s accounts.
A few days later, Tambor announced he would not be returning, telling Deadline in a statement, “Given the politicized atmosphere that seems to have afflicted our set, I don’t see how I can return to Transparent.”
However, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Tambor revealed that he expected to participate in the show’s fifth and final season to some degree, anticipating a “slap on the wrist” and nothing more. Instead, Transparent creator Jill Soloway told him on Feb. 15 that he wouldn’t be returning to the show in any capacity — even in flashbacks as a pre-transition Maura, which had been suggested as a workaround.
Despite being fired, Tambor claimed that Soloway and her sister Faith Soloway, a writer-producer on Transparent, had previously been supportive of him.
After the allegations first broke, Jill Soloway apparently told Tambor via email, “They have been after Maura from the beginning” — a reference to those who found cisgender Tambor’s casting as a transgender character offensive.
Faith Soloway told Tambor in a separate email that they were “in a coup. You are fucking fantastic. You have changed the world. We have changed the world. We will get through this.”
Faith Soloway confirmed to THR she had sent the email, believing at the time that “Jill and Jeffrey were under attack. I knew that some people disapproved of Jeffrey, a cisgender actor, playing Maura and I was upset that Jill, as the show’s creator, hadn’t had the opportunity to address the issue privately.” However, she also “sent messages of support to Trace and Van, and…never disbelieved them.”
It was a ten-hour, two-day Amazon-led investigation that ultimately quashed Tambor’s hopes of returning to the show — and let to his dismissal. At the time, Tambor called the investigation “deeply flawed and biased.”
He admitted to THR that he had anger issues, saying he “drove myself and my castmates crazy,” but denied being a predator.
“Lines got blurred. I was difficult. I was mean. I yelled at Jill — she told me recently she was afraid of me,” he said. “I yelled at the wonderful [executive producer] Bridget Bedard in front of everybody. I made her cry. And I apologized and everything, but still, I yelled at her. The assistant directors. I was rude to my assistant. I was moody.”
Tambor claimed his anger issues stemmed from fear, particularly of criticism of his playing a transgender role.
“I was scared, because I was a cisgender male playing Maura Pfefferman,” he told THR. “And my whole thing was, ‘Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right?’ To the point that I worried myself to death.”
His volatility on set, combined with the allegations from Lysette and Barnes, ultimately led to Tambor’s downfall, according to Jill Soloway, who said she had hoped the allegations were “a big misinterpretation — that one person’s harassment is another person’s dirty joke.”
“It’s not a simple case of did he do it or didn’t he do it,” Soloway told THR. “Nobody said he was a predator — they said he sexually harassed people.
“He made enemies, and I don’t think he realised he was making enemies,” she continued. “You have to be very, very careful if you’re a person in power and treat people very appropriately.”
Speaking about Transparent‘s final season, Soloway said she is feeling “a tiny bit like we are going to be OK.”
“Hopefully it sets the Pfeffermans up with some sort of beautiful reclaiming,” she said. “I think we’re going to get there with some time.”
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