A nuanced story about a family struggling to deal with change, Jill Soloway’s Transparent (2014– ) has received universal critical acclaim, signifying a shift in the television industry. Transparent won Best Series at the 2016 Golden Globes, making history as the first show produced by Amazon Studios — or any streaming service in general — to win this major award.

At a June 2016 Q&A hosted by SAG-AFTRA in New York and moderated by Entertainment Weekly’s Henry Goldblatt, independent filmmaker and newfound actor Jay Duplass spoke about Transparent as it approaches its third season. He discussed working with Jill Soloway, playing the confused character of Josh Pfefferman, HBO’s cancelling his series Togetherness, emotional fan encounters and what he’s currently binge-watching.

Here are a few selections from what he said.

On the real family story behind Transparent:

“Jill Soloway made this show, and it’s based on her life. Her father transitioned at the age of 70. It’s very real and similar things happened with her and her sister, where their parent jumped off of a cliff, and they said, ‘I guess we’re jumping off a cliff, too, now’… So we work with that huge depth and soup of where this family came from.”

The main cast of Transparent (2014 – )

On his first impression of Transparent and getting involved:

“My first impression was: ‘Oh okay, this is good. Nothing is good and this is good. This is about real people and it’s deep and scary and it’s funny.’ I had a very weird experience getting cast in this. All of you actors are going to want to flog me on my way out because I wasn’t an actor before this. I was at a party with directors… [Jill Soloway] was there, and I had loved her movie Afternoon Delight (2013). I was telling her that, and she said, ‘I’m about to make a TV show that’s about my life. I have the whole family and I don’t have the son. I need a 35 year-old wildly insecure slash wildly charismatic Jewish guy.’ I was like, ‘I know all of those dudes. They’re all my friends.’

So as directors do, I was trying to help her find that person for a while… After about 30 minutes she stopped, and she said, ‘It’s you.’”

On playing the complex character of Josh:

“[Josh has] that little nugget in him that wants to do good things and be a good person. He has zero fucking skills, and I think that’s what makes it tragic and funny at the same time… From the beginning of the show, we talked about this idea that Josh grew up in a family of three incredibly strong women and a father who wasn’t present. He later figures out that his father wasn’t a man and is now a very strong woman. He doesn’t know how to be a man. He doesn’t know what it looks like, and he’s taking his cues from the media and from, like, music industry people in LA, and it’s putting him deeper and deeper into a hole.”

Kathryn Hahn as Raquel and Jay Duplass as Josh in Transparent

On improvising:

“We improvise almost every scene. It’s not like we’re trying to make jokes or anything. It’s goal-based improvisation, so you know what you’re trying to accomplish in a scene. It’s a way of breaking from the book and making everything spontaneous, and creating that feeling that anything could happen in this moment because anything can happen… Jill expects us to come in as the characters and just do our own thing… I mean she hires all people who have very strong ideas about who they are and what they’re doing. She encourages [improvisation] almost always.”

On the culture on set of Transparent:

“It’s a completely different culture from every other moviemaking/TV-making experience you would think of… [Soloway] says thing on set like, ‘We have nothing but time. Please slow down. Do whatever you want.’ It’s really amazing. We have a lot of trans people who work on the set. It’s a very affirmative action environment. We have co-ed bathrooms, and we live in a world where you are acutely aware that gender is a sliding scale. We also live and work everyday with the idea that we are trying to make the world a safer place for a lot of people, and we get feedback like that all the time from fans.”

Amy Landecker, Jeffrey Tambor and series creator Jill Soloway on the set of Transparent

On his most memorable fan encounters:

“When we were at Sundance, a family was standing there with their daughter who was about 9, and they saw us and just started crying. They came up to us and said, ‘Thank you for letting us be the family that we are now, because before we saw your show, we were totally broken and we were a mess. Now our daughter is who she is and we’re happy.’ The other thing I get is that when I’m in the grocery store with my kids, people have a hard time believing I have kids [because of Josh’s character] and that I’m retaining them.”

On the best industry advice (and the lack thereof):

“It’s weird because I came up just making movies by hand. My brother and I came up through Sundance, and we just grew up making movies together, and we never got advice. We didn’t know anyone in the industry… I think we just messed up so much along the way that our mess-ups have been our own advice… The one thing that I always rely on as an actor is: just stop giving a shit so much. Just be a human being. Release and let go. As a writer/director I think the analogous idea that my brother and I have articulated to each other is: forget all the rules, forget all the ideas. What do you want to see next? That’s a question we ask ourselves at every stage. You forget a lot because you get caught up in the artifice and the craft. Whenever you can release and just say — ‘What do I want to see next?’ — that helps us.”

Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass on the set of Togetherness (2015 - 2016)

On where his best story ideas come from:

“The airport. Well, [Mark and I] like to watch people and how they behave, and they tell us the stories to tell. So, for instance, recently in an airport we saw a man and a woman. They were a very fit, early 50s, erudite couple. They had all their gear and their snacks, and they were ready for the plane, and they walked over to this set of seats, and the wife just pointed and [the husband] sat down. Mark and I were like: that’s a series. And then we start telling stories. Of course it has nothing to do with them, but there’s a mystery in that motion.”

On HBO canceling Togetherness:

“[The network] kind of warned us ahead of time that there were a lot of changes happening at HBO. Nobody really understood what was happening, and nobody really understands what’s happening to the TV industry right now… We were halfway through writing Season 3, so it was very heartbreaking, but at the same time… Mark and I wrote and directed every episode, which is the equivalent of making 2.5 movies a year. It was really taxing for us.”

The main cast of Togetherness

On saying goodbye to Togetherness:

“I feel like I was able to express what I came to say. It’s been amazing to have so many people rallying behind us, trying to start Kickstarter campaigns to make Season 3 of Togetherness… I feel grateful. HBO didn’t give us any requirements. They gave us notes that helped us, and they were very instrumental in teaching us how to move from the closed universe of filmmaking to the open universe of long-form television storytelling. I honestly just feel insanely surprised and blessed that I got to make 2 years of a show exactly how the way [I wanted to]. I made a show about being 40 in my neighborhood and what it means to be a family person and have children and also try to keep your own personal dreams alive. It’s a very small concept for a show in today’s world where you’re supposed to have a splash to get TV-recognized. [HBO] supported it and championed it, and it gets to live on forever in a DVD box set.”

On being starstruck by guest stars on Transparent:

“I’m hanging out with Anjelica Huston on a regular basis right now. I’m a dude who grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans just kind of like eating nachos and pizza rolls and watching HBO. And I’m hanging out with her all of the time. It’s insane.”

Jay Duplass and Gaby Hoffmann as siblings Josh and Ali in Transparent

On what he’s watching on TV now:

“I’m obsessed with The Americans (2013– ). I think The Americans is weirdly under-watched for what it does. It’s like a weird thriller/mystery/action/family values story about Russian spies living in the US, and I think the performances are great. I really loved Baskets (2016– ) this year. I thought Baskets was high art, balls-out comedy at the same time. I’m loving TV right now. You couldn’t pay me to watch TV six years ago, and now I can’t keep up.”

On the upcoming Season 3 of Transparent:

“I think one of the overarching, defining things about Season 3 is that it really starts to explore the community at large: the east LA community, the trans community, just the artist community that we live in over there and how it functions and how people are dealing with life. For my character, it’s a little bit more fun. It can’t really get darker than Season 2 for Josh. It’s always been hinted at that Josh and Ali, his younger sister played by Gaby Hoffmann, were sort of a duo that helped each other survive their mysterious and unparented childhood together. What we explore a little bit with Gaby and me in Season 3 is this idea of your sibling as your soulmate. When you’ve had such a specific upbringing like this, can anyone possibly know you and love you better than your sibling can? And when you’re that fucked up, can anyone live with you other than your sibling? We kind of explore the Grey Gardens potential, and it’s pretty fun.”