• By
Jill Soloway
Emily Shur

Last week, Amazon unveiled “Transparent,” a buzzy half-hour pilot from television producer Jill Soloway, a veteran of such cable series as “Six Feet Under,” “How to Make it In America,” “The United States of Tara” and the writer/director of the feature “Afternoon Delight,” a Sundance favorite.

“Transparent,” which can be viewed here concerns the self-involved adult children (played by Gaby Hoffman, Jay Dualass and Amy Landecker) of a patriarch, played by Jeffrey Tambor, who has—spoiler alert—begun to experiment with living as a woman.

If feedback at its site winds up being especially positive, Amazon will produce a first season of nine episodes of the show. Ms. Soloway, who lives in Los Angeles, has been drumming up online chatter in the hopes of ensuring that is the case. In a phone conversation, she spoke about “Transparent.”

What made you cast Jeffrey Tambor in the central role in the series?

He was the first person I thought of. He’s so gender queer adjacent himself. Actually, he was so comfortable dressed as a woman. When he put on a dress, he said, “I finally feel like myself.” He wasn’t joking.

Was it hard to convince him to do “Transparent”?

I sent the pilot to his agent and within about an hour of sending it, he said, “Can you meet at Le Pain Quotidian?” We had a great little meeting and he was like, “I’m in.”

Did you have other ideas if Jeffrey had passed?

Some of the other people in my mind when I was writing it were Kevin Kline, Christopher Guest, Alan Alda and Robert Klein. There was also a John Larroquette moment. I just liked the idea of a lovable American dad. But Tambor was totally into it from the start.

Were you inspired by other “trans” narratives?

I was inspired to do something slightly different. In the old days, trans people were always villains, and the new guard usually shows trans people as victims. I like the idea that the trans person is one of five characters in a story, all of whom have trouble understanding boundaries and intimacy. As we’re gearing up, hoping to get ordered, I’m thinking about the storyline. Growing up, these kids’ father was a ghost in the house. In that way, there’s a little bit of Don Draper and “Mad Men.”

How did working with Amazon compare to working with other networks?

Normally at one of those networks you’re dealing with a whole bunch of people—my own producers and development people, for instance—kind of guessing what the network president would think. You’re always going back and forth. At Amazon, it was basically me and [head of comedy] Joe Lewis talking and making decisions.

Would you go back to a more bureaucratic way of development?

What makes you think I’d have to go back? I’d guess that really successful people could go to the mat for a piece of talent no matter where they’re working, but I want “Transparent” to go on for five or six years.

Did Amazon encourage you to push the envelope?

They’re just open to creators doing what feels right. They didn’t push me in either direction.

How do you feel about the Amazon way of having viewers rate the pilots?

At first I was nervous, but I was very quickly made pretty comfortable. It was great to be able to get feedback so quickly. Normally you make a pilot and nobody sees it and you’re wondering why it doesn’t get picked up. You just try to imagine what the executives are talking about when they’re talking about your pilot. These are people wondering whether they can sell ad time against it . But here we heard directly from critics who said, “We’re crazy about this pilot.” To have the support of audiences and critics as the network is making the decision was sort of unprecedented for me. I guess if it had gone the other way, I wouldn’t have liked it. We still need America to give five stars. I’m also telling people to buy a lot of expensive stuff on Amazon. Can you ask people to watch it and buy a $5000 Samsung television after?

This article has been updated from its original version.