Carrie Soloway, inspiration for trailblazing trans Jewish protagonist of ‘Transparent,’ dies at 88

Carrie Soloway Screenshot of Instagram

(JTA) — Carrie Soloway, a Jewish psychiatrist in Chicago whose late-in-life coming out as a transgender woman formed the basis for her children’s hit Amazon TV series “Transparent,” died Nov. 21 at the age of 88.

Her death was announced this week on social media by Soloway’s children, Joey and Faith, who wrote she passed from natural causes.

“She was very humble in terms of publicity, she wasn’t interested in it,” Joey Soloway, the creator of “Transparent,” wrote in a statement announcing Carrie’s death. “She loved the show and us and the character, but sometimes she wasn’t in the mood to be everyone’s favorite trailblazer.”

“Transparent”  followed the lives of the Pfeffermans, a Jewish family in Los Angeles, whose world shifts when the parent they’ve always known as Mort comes out as a transgender woman named Maura.

Since the show’s 2014 premiere, Carrie became a “reluctant icon” to the trans community, in her family’s words. She visited the White House under then-President Barack Obama and became friends with trans elected officials, while “Transparent” blazed a path for modern LGBTQ Jews exploring their identity.

Born in London in 1937, Carrie Soloway and her family survived Nazi bombing raids during World War II. In the 1950s the family settled in Chicago, where Carrie — then living as Harry — pursued a career in psychiatry, also serving for a time as an anesthesiologist at a U.S. Army base in Massachusetts. She was married to Elaine Soloway, an author, for 30 years.

Carrie came out as a woman to her children in 2012, at the age of 70; she did not reject her “deadname” or state her preference to be called by certain pronouns, as others in the trans community typically do. Two years later, “Transparent” debuted on Amazon Prime, inspired both by her life and the reactions of her family to the news, and starring Jewish actor Jeffrey Tambor as Carrie’s stand-in, Maura Pfefferman. 

Four seasons of the show were produced, along with a two-hour finale movie. Joey Soloway, the show’s creator, themselves came out as nonbinary over the course of its run — mirroring the journey of one of the fictional Pfefferman children. In 2023, Faith Soloway — who was a writer, producer and occasional actor in the original series — revived the show as a stage musical. 

Over the course of its run, “Transparent” was showered with awards and celebrated not only for its treatment of trans narratives, but also for its deeply rooted depiction of Jewish identity and ritual. The show traced the Pfefferman family roots back to Weimar-era Berlin and took them to Israel; a rabbi was a central character, and plotlines centered on Jewish rites of passage. 

“‘Transparent’ is the most important show of my Jewish adulthood,” Matt Green, a rabbi at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim who is gay, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It was a rare TV show that got right every aspect of the Judaism it was presenting.” He noted a scene at the show’s outset, in which Maura lights the Shabbat candles — “so rich in that candle lighting is so traditionally female.”

The show was not without controversy, particularly over the casting of Tambor, a cisgender man, to play Maura. Following allegations of sexual harassment, Tambor was fired from the show and his character killed off for the finale, a musical that ended with the controversial number “Joyocaust.” The stage musical version, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2023 and whose creators have said they intend for Broadway, recasts the story to more heavily represent trans and non-binary actors.

Carrie Soloway, meanwhile, continued her psychiatry profession and debated coming out of retirement. At the time of her death, she was working on a book about her profession titled “I’m Sorry, but We’re Out Of Time.”

“Rest in power, Moppa,” Faith Soloway wrote on Instagram, using a term of endearment for Carrie the siblings had worked into “Transparent.” “We love you forever.”