Season 3 of Transparent will include a flashback episode set in 1958 that explores Maura’s identity as a transgender 12-year-old girl (to be played by young transgender actor Sophia Grace Gianna). Episode writer Our Lady J said after today’s TCA panel that looking at the childhood experiences of someone “assigned the wrong gender at birth” is “a story that hasn’t been told yet.”

Our Lady J appeared on the show’s large TCA panel that also included actors Jeffrey Tambor (who plays the adult Maura), Judith Light, Amy Landecker, Gaby Hoffman, Alexandra Billings and Jay Duplass, along with EP Victor Hsu and writer Ali Liebegott.

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Tambor said at the end of each day, “I can take off my costume of Maura, but (I) can’t take off Maura.” He said playing the character has made him a “better person, a better citizen.”

Billings, who is transgender, added her comments on the importance of Tambor’s sensitive portrayal of the transgender Maura: It is “not about putting anything on— it is coming from the inside of him in a way that’s about revelation and release and surrender,” she said. “This isn’t about an actor who puts on a wig, (it’s about) an actor who holds our community with great care and respect. What Jeffrey does cannot be hung up in a closet.”