Trivia / Transparent

• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: The Musicale Finale movie that serves as the conclusion to the series has Maura Pfefferman killed off and deals with the rest of the family reacting to her death due to her actor Jeffrey Tambor leaving the show in the wake of his sexual harassment allegations.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Alia Shawkat is openly bisexual and plays Lila, who ends up in a polyamorous relationship with Sarah.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Jeffrey Tambor quit the series in November 2017 after multiple sexual harassment allegations, leading to the series being wrapped up with a Finale Movie revolving around the aftermath of Maura Pfefferman's death rather than a fifth season as originally intended.
• Trans Character, Cis Actor: Trans woman Maura Pfefferman - the titular transparent, is played by cis actor Jeffrey Tambor. After the show became a hit, other trans characters were played by trans actresses. Tambor stated he'd be glad to end up being the last cisgender man to play a trans woman character.
• What Could Have Been: The show was originally intended to conclude with a fifth season, but Jeffrey Tambor's forced removal from the series caused by his sexual harassment allegations instead had the production team produce Musicale Finale to wrap up the show and established Maura Pfefferman as being killed off in order to work around the absence of Jeffrey Tambor.
• You Look Familiar: Several actors who appeared in the flashbacks to 1994 during Season 1 appear as different characters in the flashbacks to 1933 during Season 2.
  • Bradley Whitford plays Mark/Marcy in the 1990s and Magnus Hirschfield in the 1930s.
  • Emily Robinson plays 12-year-old Ali in the 1990s and a young version of Maura's mother Rose in the 1930s.
  • Mel Shimkovitz plays Jules, a bartender hired for Ali's Bat Mitzvah, then Jude, one of the residents of the Institute for Sexual Research.
  • Michaela Watkins plays Connie, the sympathetic wife of a transvestite, and then Maura's grandmother Yetta.
  • In the musical series finale, Rainn Wilson appears as funeral director Arthur, a callback to a completely different series; he had originally played Arthur as an intern for the family-run funeral home in Six Feet Under (for which Transparent creator and showrunner Jill Soloway wrote many scripts).

---