We all know about secrets - to have that pressure of something you can't reveal. That's universal: 'Am I safe? Am I gonna be OK? Will my family still love and respect me?'
— Jeffrey Tambor
I'm a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.
I think Maura'is funnier than I am, wittier than I am, more intelligent than I am, and I think she's just floating me at this point.
I almost should have a shirt made: 'Jill Soloway has changed my life...' Not only changed my life with the opportunity to play Maura, but the opportunity and the responsibility of playing Maura.
I've been in three sort of... I mean, I'd say they're groundbreaking series, if only because of the creators. One was 'Max Headroom', another was 'The Larry Sanders Show', and the third was 'Arrested Development'.
It was the '50s, and the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System were in fashion. I hung out in the 812 section - American theater and plays. This is where I first read Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' and was transfixed. I remember staring into space for what seemed an eternity after reading Linda Loman's final speech.
I learned the biggest lesson just watching Ed McMahon, watching him watch Mr. Carson's monologue.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is part of our constitutional rights and it belongs to everybody.
I really got used to playing Maura.
I can't say enough about the guts and the talents of Amazon. They're so agile, they're so nimble; they picked us up two weeks after we premiered, and their whole attitude is, 'Go, go, go, go,' so I'm very, very impressed.
I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.
My new toy is not knowing, because it's very creative. I'm the guy who likes to get in the car and get lost.
I did not know that you had to learn makeup. I just thought you went, 'Oh, I'm gonna put on some makeup.'
I thought I was gonna do Lear, but I'm gonna do Maura.
When I was growing up, there was a character on TV; there was a character stereotype: it was personified by Mel on 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.'
My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It's nice to do rehearsals. But it's with an audience that you get to love it!
And I'd watch George C. Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors.
The day before I work, I don't like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I'm a big believer in that.
There are secrets in families. That is the definition of a family.
I think I made $55 a week, and it was bliss... I was doing theater. It was all I ever wanted to do. It was so much fun, and you got paid for it, and you met people, and it's the greatest education in the world. And in my little Greenbrier station wagon, I felt very much like a troubadour.
To you people out there, you producers and you network owners and you agents and you creative sparks, please give transgender talent a chance. Give them auditions. Give them their story. Do that.
I've done 'Yo Gabba Gabba!' I've done... oh, it's not called 'Rapunzel' anymore. 'Tangled', that's it. Those are both huge.
There was a library near us in San Francisco. It was the West Portal Public Library. I would ask my father to drive me there at night and pick me up when it closed. I think he was worried about this routine but never let on. Also, I kept this a secret from my friends, as I don't think it would have been considered the 'coolest' habit.
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.
The honor of being able to play Maura is transformative. I'm 70 years old. I should be in a reading room, reading Dickens or something.
We did a thing that we would call we call 'hirstories.' H - I - R - S - T - O - R - Y. I would enact a young Mort. And that always felt - it was so funny - it felt more difficult than playing Maura.
The real road, to me, was within the actor, within myself, within my own personality. How much Jeffrey can I find, and how much of Jeffrey could I access? What parts of Jeffrey have I never used for Hank or for George or Oscar? - and that was a delight.
I grew up in San Fransisco in a very liberal community. My environment was very, very open and very liberal.
I kind of like not knowing how to do something - it's more exciting.
I think I have femininity, I have masculinity, but I get to use all of Jeffrey, and that's very powerful. And this is what I always thought when I went down in my little basement in San Francisco, where I grew up, and daydreamed about being an actor: It felt like this. This is what it felt like.
I can only speak for me... but in my life, I find that, in sobriety, I feel much more, and I have much more depth. I also feel - not to segue, but as being a parent of five kids, I can bring much more to my acting, and so I'm all about anything that gives you more feeling and more depth.
When I was a young boy in San Francisco, I remember being sent home from playing with a friend, and I remember the mother saying, 'Tell Jeffrey to go home.' And I said to the girl, 'Why?' She goes, 'My mother says that you're the people who killed Christ.'
I loved the gentlemanly way they treated each other. It was unlike anything I was used to. I started helping them strike the set and, at 11, began taking acting classes privately.
My part had three lines. I said, 'You look wonderful, sir,' three times. All my friends said, 'Do not take that role - and do not understudy. You'll regret it the rest of your life.' I did both of those things, and I've never regretted it once.
When I was young kid, I used to watch Jack Benny, and I thought the minimal aspect of what he did was revelatory. I loved Jack Benny.
Love New York Presbyterian. I will do anything for them.
I had a theater that was right across the street from me, and I would just go there after school and just hang out and watch... and everything seemed calmer there and nicer there and warmer there.
In Yiddish, we say, 'Nisht ahin un nisht aher.' It's neither here, it's neither there. I get more nerves than on anything I do when I'm doing multi-camera. But single-camera, I love very much.
Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I'm not much use.
George Saunders's 'Lincoln in the Bardo' is a hands-down masterpiece - the subject of Abraham Lincoln and the genius of this author is a perfect union.
'Clocked' means someone sees you for being transgender.
We have been treated gorgeously by Amazon.
When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.
There's a wonderful adage in acting that you're stuck with the character, but the character is also stuck with you.
You just put your head down and do the work.
You want to feel, 'I know that character.'
I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television.
I was a young actor who was bald, but at that time, there was a thing on television that - there was a prototype or a stereotype of a principal who was bald and mean with glasses, or there was... the angry boss who was bald.
I came to New York late; I was already past 30.
I remember going to Bob Preston's dressing room because I was losing a laugh - as you do in a long run. He said, 'Give me the script. That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.
