Transparent Takes Tribeca.
On Sunday Amazon original series Transparent closed out the Tribeca TV Festival 2019 by screening its Series Musical Finale. Ending after three seasons, the cast and crew hit the red carpet to before the premiere giving insight to the choices made in creating the film musical and what’s next for the show?
The following is a series of lightly edited excerpts taken from interviews conducted on the red carpet prior to the screening.
The Knockturnal: What is your involvement with this show, with Transparent?
Elizabeth Stanley: The Soloway Sibs are continuing to toy with the ideas of what Transparent could be beyond the Amazon series, possibly for the stage, so I’ve sort of been part of some developmental things.
The Knockturnal: What in the finally are you specifically looking forward to?
Elizabeth Stanley: I’m always specifically looking forward to anything Judith Light does, so I’m excited about that. Shakina Nayfack has also been a friend of mine for years and she was actually one of the first trans people I ever met that I could really learn about that experience from, so I know that this is really a break out moment for her and I’m super excited to see that.
The Knockturnal: How do you hope the audience leaves after the series finale?
Faith Soloway: Singing. I wrote the music so… I hope they leave singing transcended from where they are. It’s an uplifting movie about grief, so it’s not your average movie musical.
The Knockturnal: I heard from Elizabeth Stanley that there might be something in the works after the series ends. Can you tell us anything about it?
Faith Soloway: There is something in the works. We’re working on adapting it for stage, actually before even this happened I was wanting it to be a musical, before we closed it out this way. I had been writing some songs thinking about the potential for a musical.
The Knockturnal: What’s one moment in the finale that fans have to see? A specific moment that if they could only see one thing, it would be that?
Faith Soloway: That’s almost an impossible question because there’s so many amazing moments in this. I think for me it’s not like one moment, but when the movie organically crosses the line and the audience realizes that the musical is just as organic to the story as- like it all makes sense do you know what I mean. There’s some moments where the musical fills up the body, hopefully, and that’s what musicals should do. The Pfefferman’s are not- it’s not a musical entity. So the moments when that stitches together and the audience feels on the ride of the next chapter. To me there’s too many amazing moments.
The Knockturnal: How do you hope the audience leaves after seeing the finale? What is the expression, emotion, gut feeling that you hope that they have when they leave?
Jill Soloway: I guess I want the audience to leave feeling like they want to sing and dance and jump around and sing to the idea that even though the world is painful sometimes you just have to sing and dance to feel okay.
The Knockturnal: Is there a moment in the film that you are most proud of?
Jill Soloway: Wow that’s a good question. A moment? I think the final number which is called “Joy A Cost” is like one of the most unbelievable, boundary crossing, you know shattering, surprising moments of musical theater history. That’s what I’m gonna say.
The Knockturnal: How do you hope the audience leaves when they see the finale?
Jay Duplass: Well I hope they laugh and they cry and they leave very joyful. And the movie is designed to do that so I hope it actually gets accomplished, but yeah conceptually the film really tackles a big concept that is- I won’t give anything away but I’ll just say it’s a counterpoint to the holocaust. That’s the idea of the end of the movie and it’s pretty awesome to be a part of something like that.
The Knockturnal: How do you feel about the series ending?
Jay Duplass: I mean it’s weird to shoot the ending of something because you know it’s ending, it’s very sad, but to be honest the fact that Amazon let us finish the show on our own terms, and let us take this big swing by making a musical is the greatest blessing and I just feel grateful that we got to do it.
The Knockturnal: Is there a specific moment in the show that you are proud to have done?
Shakina Nayfack: The trans community especially has been conflicted with how to relate to this show and I feel really honored to be stepping into this void left by a beloved actor and a beloved character. To bring restitution to that is an extreme sense of duty, responsibility and joy.
The Knockturnal: How do you feel about the series ending on screen?
Shakina Nayfack: I think at this point everyone’s sort of refusing to believe that Transparent is ending, and that’s why Jill’s taken to saying that the show is transitioning. So I think that however the form and media, Transparent is gonna keep living.
The Knockturnal: What do you hope people take away from the finale when they see it?
Alexandra Billing: I think people should know this was a real groundbreaking piece of art that happened and it blossomed and it turned the universe and the dialogue into something that probably would not have happened without it. And I think we need to remember that as queer people because without those beginnings, we don’t remember out history, we’re doomed to repeat it.
The first photo is courtesy of Getty Images, the rest are from of IMDb.com
