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AE: It's an once-in-a-lifetime moment! So Felicity did the basic research for the role?
DT: Very much so. She consulted with Calpernia and Andrea. She went to a couple of trans conventions. She worked intensively with a woman who teaches men who are transitioning how to speak and how to walk. Men tend to sprawl on a couch and Felicity made the decision than Bree was going to draw all of her limbs in very tightly. And the physical transformation that she pulled off in this was so brilliant.

Sometimes, we would be shooting, and even in the middle of a scene that maybe was a tough scene, I'd call cut, and then I would start laughing hysterically because there was such an amazing humor, even when she didn't know it. Also, I was just delighted with how amazing her performance was.

AE: Transamerica is probably her first lead role in a feature film. As you said, it's an Oscar-caliber performance. What is it about her that made her the right actress for that role?
DT: They say that the most important thing a director does is cast well. This is like complimenting myself, because I feel like I cast well throughout. I'm really in love with all my actors in this. I think most of my first choices wanted to do the material, and the producers said “ Duncan, on our budget, anybody you've heard of we can't afford.” But they were, thank God, proved wrong. The people I really loved, real actors who disappear into roles. And I had seen Felicity in David Mamet's The Cryptogram off-Broadway, and I had always noticed her work, and she just seemed to have a penetrating intelligence and a command of the stage or the screen that really interested me. She seemed an actress like Meryl Streep or Frances McDormand; an amazing actress who just hasn't really been recognized yet. But, I recognized her.

AE: With good timing, too, with this coming out, and then her winning the Emmy.
DT: When I cast her, and she said yes, the first thing that we learned is she had to do some television pilot (for Desperate Housewives), and we had to hurry up and do pre-production because we're going to lose her to this pesky pilot, which I was really ticked off about. Because we had to go into hyper-drive, I didn't sleep for like four months, and little did I know…(laughs)

AE: That's amazing. The character of Toby, Bree's son, is gay and works in the sex trade. He's on the fringes of culture in the same way that Bree is. Can you say something about the fact that the two main characters are these people on the outside (of society)?
DT: The theme of any of us who ever felt like we were weird or different or something was wrong with us, I've had great compassion for anybody like that, because I'm like that. I wanted Bree and Toby to sort of be like yin and yang; opposites of each other. As policed and uptight about her body as she is, he has been a child-abused kid who, for fifty bucks, will take his clothes off and thinks nothing about it. So, he's her worst nightmare. He takes up space in a way that…she's always cleaning up the car on his side.

When I first met Kevin Zegers, who I ended up casting, I was meeting so many young men for this role, and I interviewed a lot of street hustlers who were a very tough and sad bunch of kids. Kevin walked in to the Chateau Marmont for a meeting in a t-shirt and jeans, and scruffy hair. I took one look at him and said, “No way, no way.” Because he was the most ridiculously gorgeous human being I'd ever seen in my life. You can't believe how pretty he is. He was so smart and so vulnerable, and he auditioned for me. It was a fantastic audition, and I kept thinking: can I do this? I'm so glad I forgave his disability, the poor thing. (laughs) And he never had a chance to do anything this raw and real before, and he worked his butt off. I really worked hard with him, and he worked hard. He pared that performance down to the simple bare essentials. He had to be very naked emotionally, as well as physically.

AE: You mentioned the idea of space, because there's a scene which I thing is the most beautiful example of the difference between them. The scene in the motel, where he (Toby) is stretched out on the bed, in these jockey shorts that are just barely on, and she comes out and is buttoned up, covered up. Is that what you are talking about?
DT: Absolutely. He thinks that she wants his body, and he doesn't understand how to relate to anybody except through his sex. Sex and his body are his only commodities as far as he is concerned.

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