Jeffrey Tambor on ‘Transparent’ performance: ‘I felt throw-up nervous’

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Hollywood actor Jeffrey Tambor has said he felt “throw-up” nervous when preparing to play a trans character in Amazon’s ‘Transparent’.

The Amazon Instant Video series, which focuses on a trans woman coming out to her family, has attracted a mixed reaction from the trans community, with some criticizing the lack of a trans woman in a lead role.

Tambor, who won a Golden Globe for the role, spoke at an event Tuesday at the Paley Center for Media in New York, saying he wanted to “do it correctly”, talking about when his character, Maura, comes out as trans to her family.

“I was plenty nervous, and still am,” he said.

On the scene when his character came out as trans, he said he was “throw-up nervous”, and that he was thinking: “I need to do it correctly for the [transgender] community, because lives are at stake.”

Fellow ‘Transparent’ star Amy Landecker last year addressed “frustration” with the casting of Tambor as a transgender woman.

The show’s creator Jill Solloway previously revealed that the show is partly autobiographical, with Tambor’s character Maura Pfefferman modeled after Solloway’s own trans parent.