BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) – Jeffrey Tambor is spiffed-out in jeans and a blue blazer and, as a further gesture, a shade of fingernail polish.
What shade is it? “Mauuuve,” he says with deadpan flourish.
Tambor, an up-for-anything actor, has logged memorable TV roles as a comically corrupt industrialist on “Arrested Development” and before that, a hapless talk-show sidekick on “The Larry Sanders Show” during his lengthy career.
Now, at age 70, he’s involved down to his fingertips in what he calls “the role of a lifetime.” Best-known for comedy, Tambor turns in a full-range performance as Mort Pfefferman, who, much to the shock of his grown children, comes out as a woman christened Maura.
While the pilot episode of this fascinating dramedy, “Transparent,” has been on Amazon’s Instant Video website for months, the additional nine half-hours of its first season premiere on Friday.