My Tranny Valentine

By Logan Hill, Nerve.com. Posted December 17, 2005.

Before Felicity Huffman won her Emmy -- and prime-time stardom -- with "Desperate Housewives," she filmed Duncan Tucker's smart debut filmTransamerica.

She plays Bree, a pre-op transsexual who discovers that her estranged son suddenly needs her. Against all formulas, they embark on an often-comic road trip. Huffman shakes off the weight of playing one of relatively mainstream cinema's first transsexuals by delivering a performance that is deeply idiosyncratic, even strange at times; ultimately you're so taken by Bree's born-again piety that you forget all about her gender reassignment.

In fact, her performance -- as a male in the middle of a transformation to womanhood -- is so complicated, that I forgot to ask her the hot-button question everyone else pops: "Wasn't it weird to land this part, as a woman?"

Honestly, it hardly seems to matter.

I loved this film, but I've got to admit, going in, I had all kinds of fears about what it might be.

You did?

I was convinced it was going to be another one of those Isn't-This-Person-Just-Like-You movies. You know, like those kids' books: My Two Daddies.

Oh, so you were surprised it wasn't just like, "Transgendered people are people too! They go to the grocery store just like you!"

Exactly.

Well, a lot of that was Duncan (Tucker, the director). In the script, Bree was prissy, uptight, well-educated. Like that stuffy old aunt that drops French phrases.

And you certainly don't play her like the girl next door either.

He gave me a lot of freedom. When he gave me the part, I asked, "What am I going to look like?" He said, "Don't change your voice, Don't change your look." He was concerned with the internal part, the truth of the heart, so I just did a lot of research, and met with a broad spectrum of transgendered women.

But you did change your look and your voice. [She dropped five octaves.]

The first time Duncan saw it all was on the first day of the shoot. He said, "Oh!" Then he jumped into it with me, and said, "Great." He became my champion from that moment on. And he was my watchdog too. If anything fell a certain way, or if I didn't walk correctly for her, if my voice went up, or I dropped my hands, he'd stop the shot. And we'd start over. In indieland, that's hari-kari.

I'd imagine any director might give you that kind of freedom now that you've got your Emmy. But back then, before "Desperate Housewives," you didn't have that kind of star power. Why'd he trust you?

I didn't have anything back then. That's what's so amazing. Duncan is just really brave. He'd only seen me in a couple of off-Broadway plays with maybe a hundred people in the audience, and he just kept saying, "I want her."

Of course, David Mamet [a longtime collaborator of Huffman's husband, William H. Macy] gave you your stage-acting break, so I've been wondering ever since I saw the film about how Mamet must be teasing you.

Well, he hasn't seen it yet. But I hope that when he does, we talk about it. That will be fascinating. Of course, no one teases you as much as Mamet -- or is as loving. I'm sure his zingers will be fantastic.

Did you read Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex?

Oh, of course. I read anything transgender-interested. And while I was shooting, I read a book about MTS, male-to-female transgender surgery. I had to just surround myself with it all the time. I needed to go to sleep with it, to read it before I went to sleep, and then again and again.

How'd you decide what to read?

I just read everything. Biographies, autobiographies, articles. And I met two women from the production company Deep Stealth, Andrea James and Calpernia Adams. They didn't know me from Adam. I just said, "Hi, I'm Felicity and I'm doing this movie." They said, "Sure, come on over."

We started by working on the script and they went through it, page by page, to make sure everything was authentic, and then they shared their own life stories. I spoke to a lot of transgendered women about all kinds of questions: what was it like when you first met a woman? When you told your parents? And Andrea helps men to find their female voice, so I tried working with her. But she couldn't help me do it in reverse! It was completely different.