Maura Pfefferman

Creation and casting

The character of Maura is based on Jill Soloway's own parent, who came out as transgender at the age of 75, three years before the series started. In fact, the character's nickname "Moppa" (an amalgam of 'Momma" and "Poppa") is what Soloway calls her parent, having briefly used the nickname "Mopsy" for her. Soloway considered using her parent's transition as creative inspiration "pretty much like three seconds [after she came out]," but she "couldn't deal with it emotionally or creatively at all for the first year." Soloway and her older sister, Faith, finally committed to basing a project around their parent after observing that, as her "Moppa" was transitioning, and her stepfather was dying, "One was losing his voice while the other was finding hers. My sister and I were both like, 'We've got to write this shit down.' It was cinematic and it was funny and it was sort of like, If this isn't a TV show, I don't know what to do with these feelings."

Amy Landecker, who portrays the character's daughter on the series, explained that Soloway cast Jeffrey Tambor as the character "from a very personal place", as “in her mind, she would see Jeffrey through the years and he reminded her of her father and I think she felt very deeply that he was the right actor for this part.”

Controversy over casting

The series has been criticized for the casting Tambor, a cisgender man, as a transgender woman, even prior to the series' premiere date. Soloway has noted in response that the show's treatment of transgender issues extends beyond its protagonist. Additionally, prominent transgender artists Laverne Cox and Jennifer Boylan (who consults for the series) have praised the casting for being representative of older transitioners.

Landecker defended the casting by saying, “This show is great in large part because of him, and I think what Jill tried to do — look, the truth is: he’s one of the greatest actors, he wanted to play this, she [Soloway] feels connected to him, [and the character’s] also pre-transition when we start the show.”

1994

The first season features multiple flashbacks to Maura's life in 1994, when she was living as Mort and married to Shelly (Judith Light). Maura's interest in femininity is only known to Shelly as a "sex thing". While admiring the models on the cover of a pornographic transgender magazine, Maura meets Marcy (Bradley Whitford), a transvestite. They befriend each other and decide to go to a weekend-long transvestite camp together, under the pretense of going on a business trip. At first finding the camp liberating, Maura is disturbed by the transvestites' institutional transphobia. She and Marcy (who is implicitly interested in Maura) have a bitter falling out over Maura's interest in a transvestite's wife staying at the camp. Upon returning from the camp, Maura reveals the truth about the camp to Shelly, who is devastated by the news, and asks for a divorce.

Present day

Maura has started participating in a transgender support group, but has yet to come out to her children. However, Maura is forced to come out to her oldest daughter Sarah (Landecker), when she accidentally runs into her while in full female garb. After a botched attempt at coming out to her son Josh (Jay Duplass), Maura decides to come out to her younger daughter Ali (Gaby Hoffmann). Ali and Sarah, while drunk, reveal that Maura is transgender to Josh, who reacts badly, claiming his parent must have dementia. In an effort to introduce her children to her world, Maura announces she is going to participate in a transgender talent show with her friend Davina (Alexandra Billings). However, Maura's children abandon their seats at the talent show, causing her to become upset.

Maura reignites her friendship with Shelly, and helps her give an overdose of Percocet to her comatose, dementia-addled second husband, Ed. At Ed's funeral, Maura arrives with Davina ostentatiously late in limo, dressed in a showy outfit; she takes advantage of the following shiva to talk about her transition. She and Ali get into a bitter fight about Ali's canceled Bat Mitzvah and Ali's lack of ambition.

Flashbacks

Season 2's flashbacks deal with Maura's tragic family history: her grandfather Haim had gone ahead to America to work, leaving his wife Yetta to work on getting visas for herself and their children, Gershom and Anna. Gershom had become a patient of Magnus Hirschfeld and was living at his clinic, allowed there to express her gender identity under the name Gittel. Anna, fed up with Yetta's fatalism and Haim's absence, accepted Gittel and went to live at the clinic until its destruction by the Nazis. Although Anna was able to escape and joined Yetta in emigrating, Gittel was taken away. In spite of her disapproval of Gittel, Yetta gave Anna a keepsake of Gittel's: the distinctive and unattractive Pfefferman family ring. They eventually arrived in Los Angeles and found Haim living with another woman. A few years later, Anna gave birth to a baby, a biological male, in spite of family predictions that she would have a girl.

Present day

At the beginning of Season 2, Maura and Shelly have loosely reentered into a relationship together; however, Maura ends the reunion, as she considers it to be unhealthy. Her friendship with Davina also falls apart when Maura treats Davina's relationship with her boyfriend condescendingly.

Maura learns to embrace the mothering side of her through talking with her transgender friend Shea (Trace Lysette) about Shea's suicidal thoughts. This results in Maura deciding to spend time with her daughters; the women take an opportunity to go to Idlewild Womyn's Music Festival together. However, the festival, like the transvestite camp before, has transphobic policies, only allowing "women-born women" to be part of the festivities. Maura is distraught and leaves the camp with Vicki (Anjelica Huston), a breast cancer survivor; they enter into a relationship. In the final episode, Maura decides to finally reunite with her estranged sister and mother, whose reaction to Ali's ring puzzles Maura.

Flashbacks

Flashbacks in the third season pick up Maura's family saga from the second season, now focusing on her somewhat strained childhood in the 1950s. Unable to express herself and perennially untalented at sports, Maura frequently dressed up in her mother's nightgown and jewelry and danced alone in the family bunker. Rose and Yetta were somewhat tolerant, provided Maura confined her activities to the bunker. Things took a turn for the worse when Haim screamed at her in front of the whole family, revealing how Gittel had been killed in the Holocaust because of her gender identity. Brina shortly thereafter publicly denounced Maura at school, beginning their lifelong feud.

Flashbacks to the 1960s reveal that "Mort", in his early twenties, dated a young artist and even helped her with a gallery opening. It is implied they are engaged when she shows off a ring to attendants with Mort by her side. Mort, however, only had eyes for her best friend: Shelly. They carried on a secret affair; Mort told Shelly the engagement ring should be on her finger. During their affair, Mort asked Shelly if she can keep a secret, which is not revealed during the episode.

Present day

Maura continues to see Vicki, has rebuilt her relationship with Davina, and is volunteering at the LGBT center. After a trip to the hospital for exhaustion, Maura announces at her 70th birthday that she wants to be called Mama rather than Moppa, which angers Shelly, and that she intends to undergo gender confirmation surgery, which distresses Vicki – Maura has neglected to mention it to either of them before publicly making the announcement.

Maura's relationship with her sister warms somewhat, but she is angered to see that it is only because their mother is fading away. Although Vicki and Brina get along very well, Maura perceives their bonding as coming at her expense, and she and Vicki break up after an explosive argument.

Maura eventually learns that she cannot undertake surgery safely due to heart issues, and wonders if her transition is stalled, invalidated, or, perhaps most distressingly, complete.

Critical reception

The character of Maura Pfefferman and Jeffrey Tambor's performance as the character have received critical acclaim. John Doyle of the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail called Tambor "very, very fine", stating that "it is Tambor as Maura who anchors this exquisite dark comedy. Maura, the one character undergoing tremendous change and needing courage, is the calm one. There is such dignity and dry humour in Mort’s revelations about his life, feelings and family, at the LGBT meetings he attends. There is such gossamer-like fragility to his new identity as Maura. It is to the great credit of... Tambor that there is nothing camp about Maura. She is this enormously lovable creation, a heroine you adore and fear for." Eric Thurm, reviewing the pilot o the series for The A.V. Club, called Maura the show's "new, furiously beating heart... It’s tough to overpraise Jeffrey Tambor’s work in the pilot—the weary softness in his voice (“Oh.”), the slight shifts in the way he carries himself as Mort and as Maura, and the way we can immediately see a continuity between the two as distinct, but related expressions of the same person. As much as Maura’s transition is the driving force of the show, she’s a complex character even without that detail: empathetic, discovering her own strength in a support group-meeting and comfortably communicative, endlessly caring for her children and deeply appalled at the way they turned out. She’s struggling to come to terms with her own identity, but in a different, more concrete way from her children." Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote that Tambor "joins Lee Pace in Soldier's Girl and Tom Wilkinson in Normal in delivering one of TV’s most sensitive and genuine trans turns by a non-trans man, quietly revealing the loneliness and longing at Maura’s core."