Mother Jones
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FOR TV WRITER and director Jill Soloway, making good television was never enough. “I used to go on pitch meetings and say, ‘I want to write something that’s never been written before, something that’s going to change the world,'” she said at a recent panel. After attracting attention with zany theater experiments, the Chicago-born writer was plucked to work on shows like HBO’s Six Feet Under and Showtime’s United States of Tara.
But her breakthrough arrived when Amazon bought her series, Transparent. Equal parts comedy and melancholy drama, the show follows the three Pfefferman children, who are stumbling to find their truest selves as their father (played by Jeffrey Tambor) transitions into a woman named Maura. Transparent’s much anticipated second season will premiere in December to a more trans-aware culture, one that has largely embraced Caitlyn Jenner and witnessed the hiring of the White House’s first transgender employee. Soloway, 50, deserves some props for this momentum. In 2015, Transparent took home two Golden Globes and five Emmys, including one for directing. But for Soloway, whose own father, or “moppa,” came out as transgender at the age of 75, “to feel like it’s for a larger cause is the most exciting part of all of this.”
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