“Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor took home the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy series on Sunday, and took the chance to advocate for transgender actors on stage.
“I’m not going to say this beautifully, but to you people out there — you producers and you network owners and you agents and you creative sparks — please give transgender talent a chance,” the actor said while accepting his award. “Give them auditions. Give them their stories.”
“I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television,” he continued. “We have work to do.”
Tambor took home the lead actor award for the second consecutive year on Sunday, for his role as Maura Pfefferman, the transgender matriarch of the critically acclaimed Amazon series “Transparent.”
His statements come after the casting of Matt Bomer, a cisgender man, as a transgender woman in the film “Anything” came under fire by some activists who say the part should have gone to a transgender woman. Soloway weighed in on the controversy in an interview with TheWrap at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.
“Would it be inappropriate for me to say I feel we are the last people ever who should have been able to cast a cis man as a trans person?” she said. “Like it’s absolutely not OK, but we were the last people to do it right.”
“Writing, directing, shooting, telling their own stories,” Soloway continued. “If so many trans people had their own shows, and they were casting trans people in their own stories, this would probably be less of a stain.”
See the complete list of Sunday’s winners here.