Star-studded premiere for Amazon series “Transparent” starring Jeffrey Tambor as a transgender woman

It was quite a scene last night at the United Artists Theatre at the Ace Hotel with a line of attendees down Broadway almost to 9th Street.

This was one hot ticket and it was all for the premiere showing of the new Amazon Studios show Transparent about an LA family with serious boundary issues. They have their past and future unravel when a dramatic admission causes everyone’s secrets to spill out.

It’s no secret that the admission is that the father of three adult children comes out as a transgender female. I won’t spill any of the rest of the secrets but they are pretty wild.

I chatted with the series lead Jeffrey Tambor on the red carpet as well as Judith Light who plays his ex-wife and mother of his children.

‘Jeffrey Tambor is the perfect person to be playing this part. I can’t even begin to tell you the kind of work that he is doing,’ said Light who is also currently starring on TNT’s Dallas and in recent years has won two Tony Awards for her work on Broadway.

Tambor told me that he has had a lot help from the LGBT community in learning and in preparing for his role.

‘This is important, this is a part of a lifetime,’ he said. ‘This is why you went into acting.’

Jay Duplass (pictured, left) who plays the son of Tambor and Light on the show said: ‘These are some of the best actors I’ve ever been around. We felt like a family from the very beginning and I feel so lucky to be a part of it. It’s amazing to be a part of a dramatic series that’s also super funny and also happens to be on the forefront of a civil rights movement.’

Also chatted with series creator and executive producer Jill Soloway (pictured, left) who is so full of passion about this series which will premiere Amazon Prime on September 26.

‘Fuck!’ Soloway said to the crowd once everyone was seated in the theater. ‘I’m going to try and breathe – breathe this in. … This is a movement, this is a moment that is so much bigger than me.’

The show is semi-autobiographical for Soloway who said she has a trans parent ‘who made a break for freedom and authenticity. You led by example and you demanded that I do the same.’

She told the crowd the show is ‘for all the trans people who want to be seen, who deserve to be seen.’

Like a Netflix series, viewers can binge watch all 10 half-hour episodes of this dramedy. We were shown the first two last night and I am hooked.

‘I truly don’t think there’s been anything like this show before,’ Joe Lewis, head of Original Programming at Amazon Studios said before the screening began. ‘What people are going to see next week is really a five-hour movie with nine intermissions.’

On the red carpet, I also gabbed with several actors with recurring roles on the show including Bradley Whitford, Amin Joseph and Carrie Brownstein.

Whitford, the star of The West Wing who most recently starred in Trophy Wife, appears in three episodes of the show.

‘It happens to be something that needs to be talked about and I loved Jill’s ability to deal with issues of sexuality and gender sensitively without being served a plate of vegetables,’ he said.

Joseph said he has never prepared so extensively for a show. Cast members did workshops before filming to get to know each other better.

‘The character exploration was very intense,’ he said. ‘It helped me fund out things about myself as well as the character. I really had an amazing time working on the series.’

Other celebrity guests I spotted at the event included Dana Delaney and Clark Gregg and spotted Larry David, Wilson Cruz, Kate Flannery, Sean Hayes, Jennifer Grey, Sharon Lawrence, Max Carver, Sarah Chalke and Mark Duplass on the red carpet or in the crowd.

Gregg wasn’t really doing press but I got him to come over for a quick chat and he explained why he was there.

‘I’m such a huge fan of everyone involved in this from Jeffrey Tambor to Jill Soloway and I love this pilot. My wife (Jennifer Grey) just did another Amazon pilot called Red Oaks. We’re happy to be in the Amazon family.’

Gregg also happy to be in the Marvel family in the role of Phil Coulson which he has played in the films Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Marvel’s The Avengers and in the television series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC.

‘Even in my wildest nerd fan boy fantasies as a 15 year old Marvel fan, I never could have imagined this. As a fan of those comics, I never even thought they would make movies of these superheroes we grew up with in the 70s and 80s. So to be part of that is a huge deal to me.’