Jeffrey Tambor hasn’t had a good year. He was accused of sexual harassment last November by his former assistant Van Barnes and his Transparent co-star Trace Lysette. After an internal investigation, Amazon announced that the Emmy winner would not be returning to the series as transgender matriarch Maura Pfefferman—a shake-up that pushed shooting for the acclaimed dramedy’s fifth season to December 2018.
But Tambor, who has denied any wrongdoing, has also found support among some of his peers—including Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, and writer-director Armando Iannucci, all of whom spoke in Tambor’s defense at the March 8 New York premiere of Tambor’s latest film, The Death of Stalin.
Their shows of support came days after Barnes sat down with Megyn Kelly, claiming that Tambor had regularly made lewd comments towards her and that he watched her sleep naked while they temporarily lived together. Tambor has fiercely denied what he’s called “false accusations,” railing against Amazon’s “deeply flawed” investigation—“I can only surmise that the investigation against me was . . . biased toward the toxic politicized atmosphere that afflicted our set”—and Transparent creator Jill Soloway’s “unfair characterization” of him. “As I have consistently stated,” he maintained after the investigation concluded, “I deeply regret if any action of mine was ever misinterpreted by anyone and I will continue to vehemently defend myself.”
In the weeks since, others have come to his defense, as well, including members of the Emmy winner’s various on-screen families. “There are a number of us who stand behind him,” David Cross told amNewYork in a February 19 interview. “From the limited amount we know, we stand behind Jeffrey.” Jason Bateman, for his part, simply told *The Hollywood Reporter, *“I love Jeffrey. I always will. I can’t go further than that, but I will always love that man.” Season 5 of Arrested Development is wrapped and expected to premiere on Netflix later this year.
Part of Cross’s reasoning in standing behind Tambor is the ambiguity surrounding Amazon’s investigation. “I think it’s very curious that Amazon didn’t make public the results of their internal investigation,” he told T.H.R. “I’m not sure why they would do that. I just know the whole thing is rather curious to me.”
Isaacs, who plays Field Marshal Zhukov in The Death of Stalin, also cited Amazon’s veiled conclusions on Thursday night, saying that “they were rather secret” and that his experience with Tambor has been “completely delightful.”
“He’s also a comedy genius,” Isaacs told Vanity Fair. “I don’t know what he did or didn’t do to anybody. It’s not for me to be engaged with the veracity of the accusations, [but] I found him to be completely delightful, and I want to hope that none of those things are true . . . I can only go on the man that I met, and the man that I met was delightful and friendly and loving and kind.”
Isaacs, who wore a Time’s Up pin to the premiere—the issues raised by the movement are “a conversation that needs to continue to be had,” he said—also noted the magnifying glass today’s #MeToo climate has put on abusers guilty of things worse than what Tambor’s been accused of. “There’s a big, long line around the block of people who are accusing Donald Trump, who is a self-proclaimed sexual predator,” he said. “The stuff that I’ve read about Jeffrey seems very mild.”
Isaacs confirmed, too, that the allegations against his co-star wouldn’t influence whether or not he works with him in the future. “There’s plenty of people I wouldn’t work with again—people who have been exposed to the public and people who haven’t been exposed to the public,” Isaacs said. “But Jeffrey’s not one of them.”
Buscemi, who stars as Nikita Khrushchev, echoed Isaac’s sentiment, saying, “I’d work with him, yeah,” while also expressing sorrow for the ongoing situation. “Jeffrey’s great. I’m sorry that what’s happened happened. He’s wonderful in the film and I hope people will see [it].”
Iannucci, too, has recently been subject to a particular line of questioning: why did he not edit The Death of Stalin to remove Tambor, à la Ridley Scott re-shooting All the Money in the World following Kevin Spacey’s downfall? “The Spacey story is, there’s more that is known about that, so you can see the thinking there,” Iannucci told IndieWire. Plus, Iannucci added, his film “had been released in the U.K. before any of this came out, and I don’t want to take anything away from [Tambor’s] performance.” Tambor stars as Georgy Malenkov, Stalin’s successor.
At Thursday night’s premiere, Iannucci doubled down, saying that the film’s October 20 release in the U.K. was “long before these allegations came up”—but admitted that Barnes’s Wednesday morning interview on Today gives him more to think about. “To be honest, I’m still absorbing what’s been coming out the last 24 hours, so at the moment, I’m just going to concentrate on the film,” he said. “He’s great in it, and he was a delight to work with, and I’m proud of his performance.”
The Death of Stalin opens in limited release Friday, March 9.
