Jill Soloway
Jill Soloway
Jill Soloway is an American comedian, playwright, feminist, Emmy-winning television writer, and award-winning director who won the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival for directing and writing the film Afternoon Delight. She is also known for her work on Six Feet Under and for creating, writing, executive producing, and directing the Amazon original series Transparent...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth26 September 1965
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.
I think, because of the Internet, we're not looking at the very, very narrow channels for distribution that there used to be.
I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.
I think I've always had that struggle my whole life, of feeling a little bit more gender-neutral, feeling more comfortable as a creative person when I'm dressed like a boy, when I'm dressed more masculine.
My purpose as an artist is to heal the divided feminine in our culture. Well, okay wait, that sounds incredibly cheesy and like something a massage therapist might do at Esalen.
I was the kind of Jew who'd be in a bar, somebody would say it's Yom Kippur, and I'd go, 'Really?'
Some of you guys are going to boo, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't like dogs.
My sister and I created a show called 'The Real Life Brady Bunch,' which was sort of a theatrical sensation that got us attention in L.A. and New York.
My sister and I are incredibly close, and we created together from childhood through the time we spent in Chicago at the Annoyance Theatre.
On some sets, if a helicopter goes by, what would normally happen is that somebody would go, 'There's a helicopter. Stop.' I'd never stop for a helicopter. I am always trying to make sure that the machine is in service to the actors.
I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.
I wouldn't necessarily say that 'Alpha House' or 'Betas' embodied a particular vision of Amazon of the kind of brand or programming they were gonna do. I think those were the first lucky creators who hit it right for them.
I'm a minimalist Jew, but on Friday night, I celebrate Shabbat. At sundown, we light candles, say the blessing, and I don't turn on my computer for 24 hours.
I love a kind of shambling outsider protagonist who always feels like they're 'other.'