Producer Rick Rosenthal talks about the Jeffrey Tambor series Transparent, which stars Tambor as a quirky family patriarch who’s beginning the process of transgender transformation.
“It’s about a dysfunctional family, and that’s why everybody in America is watching it, because is there a family that isn’t a dysfunctional family?” said Rick about the Golden Globe-nominated series created for Amazon Prime.
“It reminded me a little bit of when I was producing… a series a long time ago called Life Goes On, about a family who had a Down Syndrome son. But it was really about a family who had an underdog in their family – and every family has an underdog.”
He compares the concept of that series to Transparent, which people are so far responding to and relating to the struggles of the various characters in the family.
Transparent is nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series and Tambor picked up a Globe nom for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy. “It’s really about how does the family deal with all of its issues in a big family that has all sorts of secrets – it’s like every family,” Rick jokes.
He adds that the idea for the new series came out of the film Afternoon Delight, which won writer/director Jill Soloway a Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Watch the full episode to hear more about Transparent, as well as his experience directing Halloween II and discovering Sean Penn and Ally Sheedy in the 1983 drama Bad Boys.
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