Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Michael Tamboris an American actor and voice actor, widely known for his roles as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show; George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 2015...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth8 July 1944
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
On the other hand, we don't come to work with all of these social goals, nor are we directly trying to change the world and all of that. Our job is that we have these human characters, and it's our responsibility to play them truthfully and as human as possible. Jill has cast this impeccably. These actors nail it, even the non-Pfeffermans. It's ridiculous.
And I'd watch George C. Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors.
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.
The Emmy should be an ensemble award, too. I kept howling at everyone else's performances.
I thought that the hardest part would be the external - would be the - oh, nails and the hair and the makeup and the dress and the heels and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And actually, that wasn't the hardest. That was very, very, very easy for me, and I liked it.
Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?'
When I got this role, my daughter Molly said, 'Dad, you've come full circle.
You push a button and it goes all over the world and on Sunday people are saying, 'Oh, I binge watched all 10 of them. Where's more?' and you go oh, the world has changed. It's not my dad walking to the television set and turning a knob to Ed Sullivan.
They were working on Home of the Brave - deconstructing it, putting it together. I kept coming every day to watch. It seemed beautiful.
It's everything I wanted it to be and more, ... Doing Mamet is working without a net. He's so delicious. I knew he was great, but I did not know that by doing him, you get him. It's like hearing an overture in a musical. There isn't an ounce of fat on this thing. It's great!
As my manager says, 'These are wonderful problems.'
I get a singular comment that's very revealing: "I didn't know what to expect." Every time I hear that I think it's really just code for, "I wasn't sure I'd be comfortable with you in this role," which I understand coming from Oscar Bluth and Hank Kingsley and whatever. But I think there's a degree of, "Oh, okay, this is how it is." Then almost always people tell me that they love it and then people start talking to me about their families, whether it's transgender issues or not.
I had a lot of questions where I had to be very frank and clinical. I had to go to school on it about what it could mean physically to be trans and the options that have to be weighed and considered. But I love that. Exploring that opens my worldview in ways that I would never be able to try.
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.