Temperatures may be falling, but the small screen is heating up with buzz-worthy performances, must-see series and a few splashy specials. On the list: Lifetime’s adaptation of the biblical best-seller “The Red Tent,” with Debra Winger (Dec. 7 and 8), NBC’s “Peter Pan Live!” from producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (Dec. 4), and these stars of cable, network and Internet TV.
Jeffrey Tambor is getting critical praise for his Emmy-worthy turn in a literally transformative role: He plays Maura Pfefferman — formerly Mort, a retired political-science professor who’s transitioning to female in the Amazon Prime series “Transparent.” How does a 70-year-old reveal such a secret to her ex-wife (Judith Light) and three grown but emotionally immature, self-absorbed children? In the hands of writer Jill Soloway, it’s the source of incisive Jewish humor.
“It reminds me a lot of my family and around our table,” said Tambor, who grew up Jewish in San Francisco. Other aspects of the situation also seemed familiar. “As a Jew, I understand ‘otherness,’ ” he said. But playing Maura has come with challenges, both physical and emotional.
Walking in heels took some getting used to, as did the hourlong sessions he’d spend in the makeup chair — four times his usual time. And, he said, “It’s the first time I’ve gone to ‘Hair’ in 40 years.” But, Tambor said, he was most concerned about portraying Maura truthfully. “This is a lot of responsibility,” he said. He regularly consulted the production’s transgendered advisers. “I asked a lot of personal questions. They’re often on the set, and just them being around gives me a lot of confidence.”
Tambor, 70, who has a grown daughter as well as younger children ages 9 and 7, plus 5-year-old twins and a grandson, said he feels especially close to the character. “I like her. I believe in her. I find her very comforting. She’s very real to me,” he said. “I think this is one of the best roles I’ve ever had in my life, and to have this happen on, shall we say, the back nine — there’s not an hour that doesn’t go by when I [don’t] say I’m very lucky.”
All 10 episodes of “Transparent” are now available on Amazon Prime.
Messy marital splits and what it’s like to survive them and reinvent oneself in their aftermath is the subject of the incisively funny new Bravo series “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce,” which stars the similarly named Jewish actors Lisa Edelstein and Paul Adelstein as a couple calling it quits after 20 years.
Lisa Edelstein in “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” Photo by Carole Segal/Bravo
Edelstein plays Abby Shoshanna McCarthy, an über-successful best-selling author of books on marriage and parenting whose husband cheats with a younger woman, causing her to have a career-jeopardizing public meltdown. Her divorced friends and gay brother are there to give her advice — for better or worse — on how to handle everything from the divorce to dating to raising her two kids, even as husband Jake remains very much still in the picture.
“It’s a bare-bones view of relationships and what happens when your life suddenly takes a really sharp turn. But you’re still a family. You grew up together,” said Adelstein, whose character, Jake Novack, has issues of his own. “He has been in a state of suspension. His career never took off. He didn’t have to go out and make a living because his wife was doing very well. He can’t rely on that anymore, and there’s some resentment over the fact that she’s the breadwinner. Just as the split forces Abby to take a hard look at herself, Jake has to take a look at himself and how he’s complicit.”
Judaism becomes an issue during a divorce mediation session when Abby, half-Jewish on her mother’s side but not a bat mitzvah, and Jake, Jewish on his father’s side, but a bar mitzvah, argue over who is “more Jewish.” Abby “insists that their kids be raised Jewish, though they already are — it’s not an issue until she makes it an issue,” Adelstein said. “But they find a middle ground on it. One of the things they decide is that it would be nice to have a family Shabbat, even if they’re splitting up. You see that at the end of Episode 2, and, in contrast to everything else that’s going on, it’s really poignant.”
Filmed in Vancouver with exteriors shot in Los Angeles, “Girlfriends’ Guide” is set in Hollywood, where the divorce rate might seem disproportionately high. Adelstein chalks that up to publicity. “You might hear about people in Hollywood getting divorced more, but the statistics are the same,” he said.
Married in real life to actress Liza Weil (“How to Get Away With Murder”) for eight years, Adelstein has a strong Jewish identity and is an active member of his Reform synagogue. “I consider myself religious and a cultural Jew,” he said. “We celebrate the holidays. We go to shul.” Jewish humor — everything from Groucho Marx to Woody Allen, The Three Stooges, even Looney Tunes cartoons “played a huge role in my house and my life,” he said.
Of Polish and Russian descent — his late step-grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz — Adelstein did not become a bar mitzvah; the rabbi of his suburban Chicago synagogue banned b’nai mitzvot because they were “getting too ostentatious.” Adelstein said he’s considering pursuing an adult bar mitzvah, perhaps when his daughter Josephine, 4, becomes a bat mitzvah.
Adelstein also serves as a writing consultant on the series and wrote the fourth episode. In addition to acting, he is a musician and composer and wants to continue doing both. “I want to go where the good work is, work on stuff I care about,” he said. Travel is also on his to-do list. “We want to go to Israel, Italy, Greece, Sweden and Russia.”
“Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” premieres Dec. 2 at 10 p.m. on Bravo.
On the CBS series “Madam Secretary,” Bebe Neuwirth plays the very capable Chief of Staff Nadine Tolliver, right-hand woman to the titular official (Téa Leoni). “What intrigued me about Nadine was her willingness, her desire, to be the person behind the power — the quiet support who elegantly and intelligently helps the person at the center of attention,” said Neuwirth, who loved the way the script “portrayed strong, intelligent women. There was nothing stereotypical about them.”
Bebe Neuwirth in “Madam Secretary” Photo by David Giesbrecht/CBS
Although the Emmy (“Cheers”) and double-Tony Award winner (“Sweet Charity,” “Chicago”) wasn’t looking for a TV series, she was open to the idea, especially one that didn’t require her to leave New York, she said.
Neuwirth grew up across the river in Princeton, N.J., in a non-observant family. “I’m not religious. I consider myself a cultural Jew. When I was very young, my family had seders and lit the Chanukah lights, my father reciting a prayer. But there was no discussion of religion in our home, I never went to temple and really didn’t know anything about it,” she said. Nevertheless, she added, “I identify unquestionably as a Jew. My husband is not Jewish. He, too, is not religious, so there was no problem when we planned our wedding.”
Neuwirth, who did consult the series’ State Department adviser for background, chose “to create a character defined by a personality and emotional life, rather than her job, although Nadine’s choice of work says, I believe, quite a lot about her,” Neuwirth said. Nadine makes reference to her Jewish ancestry in the sixth episode, when she toasts the memory of her grandfather, “Louis Grossman, who was killed at Auschwitz.”
With career highlights that range from TV’s iconic “Cheers,” to working with Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse on Broadway, to playing opposite Tom Selleck on “Blue Bloods,” Neuwirth isn’t planning her next step. “I’m not a strategist. I certainly dream about different ideas, but rarely act on them. The exception to that is when I create my cabaret shows.” Her latest, “Stories With Piano,” was recorded at the New York club 54 Below for a CD called “Stories … in NYC.” Both it and a studio record called “Porcelain,” produced by her husband, Chris Calkins, are available via iTunes.
Neuwirth also keeps busy as a member of the board of trustees of The Actors Fund, for which she created The Dancers’ Resource, to help “professional dancers of all disciplines.”
Following the Nov. 30 episode, “Madam Secretary” will go on hiatus during December and return to CBS on Jan. 4 at 8 p.m.
“Friends” ended its network run 10 years ago, but Lisa Kudrow continues to thrive on cable television, simultaneously starring in two series, as a woefully inept shrink in “Web Therapy” on Showtime and as the has-been actress Valerie Cherish in HBO’s aptly titled revival of the 2005 series “The Comeback.”
Lisa Kudrow in “The Comeback” Photo by Colleen Hayes/HBO
“It’s nine years later and she’s not as much of a doormat. She’s a little crankier and less afraid of showing that,” said Kudrow, who missed playing Valerie “on a very personal level. I really enjoyed being someone for a period of time that just thought everything was OK.”
A Los Angeles native, Kudrow grew up in the ’70s aware of Jewish comedians, but said she can’t pinpoint a direct influence. “I recently saw a documentary about Jewish comedy and how well Jews complain, and it’s the source of their humor, but I don’t think that’s part of what I do. I do awkward,” she said.
She found a bigger comedic source at her own dinner table. “When you’re the youngest one in the family, you’re absolutely not the funniest one in the room. But my family’s very funny,” Kudrow explained. “So I would steal their stuff and bring it to school and score.”
“The Comeback” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO.
“Web Therapy” airs Wednesdays at 11 p.m. on Showtime
; and Rabbi David Wolpe, author of “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press). The moderator will be Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion and author of “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary” (URJ Press). I will be joining the panel as author of “King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel” (Ballantine). Any conversation about David, who is shown in the Bible to be a man of many parts, is bound to strike sparks: “No other figure has the mysterious magnetism that makes David such a beloved hero,” Wright writes. “No wonder it has been said that Israel revered Moses but loved David.” The program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 7 at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, 8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills. For free phone reservations and questions, call (213) 749-3424, ext. 4254.</p>
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Novelist and short-story writer Richard Ford is a practitioner of “dirty realism” in American fiction who has been honored with a string of distinguished awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Independence Day.” The character who appears in many of his novels, including the newly published “Let Me Be Frank With You,” (Ecco), is a much-pondered figure called Frank Bascombe, not exactly an everyman or an alter ego of the author, but someone who has taken on a palpable existence of his own in American literature.</p>
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” target=”_blank”>booksoup.com.. The book is set in Los Angeles on the eve of World War II and shows how Angelenos of Japanese descent fell victim to racial hysteria and war panic. As he has done many times before, Ellroy transcends the genre in which he writes to achieve something that is both more intimate and more elevated than hardboiled mystery fiction, which is why “Perfidia” has been aptly described as both “a novel of astonishments” and “a great American novel.” Ellroy will talk about and sign copies of his new book at 7 p.m. on Dec. 8 at the Barnes & Noble at The Grove at Farmers Market, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles. (323) 525-0270.</p>
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Every performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” is an occasion for celebration, whether it’s a Broadway show or an amateur production by the kids at a local synagogue. The celebratory spirit can also be found in Barbara Isenberg’s effervescent new book, “Tradition! The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ the World’s Most Beloved Musical” (St. Martin’s Press).</p>
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