Deadline announced Jill Soloway is creating a new pilot for Amazon titled Transparent, which is set to cast Arrested Development star Jeffrey Tambor in the leading role.
Tambor will be playing Mort, a “middle-aged parent who sits his three adult children down for a revealing, personal conversation. Mort has been secretly living a double-life as a woman, and is eager to introduce the family to their new, authentic parent.”
Tambor recently starred in another Amazon pilot, Onion News Empire, which has yet to receive the green light for production. He also filmed four episodes of an NBC series; Next Caller, alongside Dane Cook, though the network canceled the show before the season finished filming, Huffington Post reports.
Historically, trans visibility on network television has proven to be problematic, with representation of the trans community usually presented in an extremely narrow, limited understanding. Last year, GLAAD published study that examined ten years of transgender representation on television and found that “more then half [of the portrayals] were negative or defamatory.”
However, more recently television has been making new strides in the LGBT community. Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie is set to air an episode that features a family with same-sex parents. A Disney Channel Spokesperson said, ”This particular story line was developed under the consultancy of child development experts and community advisers. Like all Disney Channel programming, it was developed to be relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness.”
In an recent interview, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted that “the linear TV channel model is ripe for replacement.”