Jill Soloway
The TV Trailblazer Who Refuses To Conform
Jill Soloway writes, produces and directs not one but two television series, both critically successful and reflective of Soloway’s own queer, feminist ethos.
“Transparent,” the offbeat, profoundly Jewish Amazon series that made Soloway a multiple Emmy winner and a household name among television buffs, has recently been renewed for a fifth season. Critics have praised it for Soloway’s dynamic, multidimensional depiction of a family that must reckon with their father’s late-in-life gender transition — while navigating their own painful, funny and at times tragic lives.
Now 52, Soloway identifies as a gender nonconforming queer person who prefers to be referenced with the gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “them” and “their.” “Transparent” was inspired by Soloway’s experience of their own father’s transition, and since the show premiered in 2013, Soloway has undergone a shift in the way they thinks about their own gender.
More recently, Soloway adapted Chris Kraus’s cult-favorite novel “I Love Dick” into a television show, also for Amazon. The show is about a woman who comes to terms with her sexuality when she falls in love with and subsequently begins to stalk her husband’s co-worker. Like “Transparent,” the show subverts expectations of the modern woman to create a character that’s even more relatable.
Soloway’s work is indicative of a new media landscape that’s excited to embrace — and market — shows whose characters are queer, feminist, angry and unwilling to conform to their society’s definition of any of those words.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
