TORONTO — Jeffrey Tambor just won his second Emmy for playing Maura Pfefferman, one of television’s most original and complicated characters, on Jill Soloway’s groundbreaking series “Transparent.’’ But Tambor’s heart-wrenching and hilarious rendering of Maura’s quest for personal freedom in the show’s first two seasons was just the beginning of the character’s journey. She’s now at a crossroads, says Tambor. As season three opens, Maura is settled but unhappy, wrestling with deeper and thornier issues of identity and transformation as she contemplates gender confirmation surgery.

“She’s not sure how to dress, where to live, who her friends are, who to trust, what gender she’ll find romantic love [with],’’ says Tambor. “She goes to the LGBT community to be of service but there’s no one her age around her. She’s a quote teenager unquote trying to navigate the system [when] she can’t even navigate her own makeup.’’

The actor and other members of the “Transparent’’ cast spoke to the Globe at the Toronto International Film Festival, where new episodes premiered this month.

Season three of “Transparent,’’ which streams on Amazon starting Friday, continues to chart, with humor and poignancy, the foibles of the Pfefferman clan of Pacific Palisades, headed by patriarch-turned-matriarch Maura. The new season’s overarching theme, judging from the first few episodes, is transformation writ large. In episode three, directed by series creator Jill Soloway and co-written with her sister, Faith, a longtime Somerville resident, Maura is feted at her 70th birthday party where she declares her desire to “transition medically.’’ “That means surgery — face, breasts, vagina,’’ she announces to a mix of astonishment and acceptance from her adult children Sarah (Amy Landecker), Josh (Jay Duplass), and Ali (Gaby Hoffmann), and Maura’s former wife, Shelly (Judith Light).

Maura, Tambor says, “made this decision that’s life-affirming. She was the one who broke for freedom at the age of 70 and set everything into motion. She wants to know how far she can go in her transition.’’

Tambor had inklings before “Transparent’’ debuted on Amazon in 2014 that he was part of something unique and daring. “We shot this arrow into a zeitgeist that was already there. We didn’t create the zeitgeist but the timing was so right that it blew up. And you are talking to a very grateful 72-year-old actor,’’ says Tambor, who’s previous TV credits include “Arrested Development’’ and “The Larry Sanders Show.’’ He also appeared onstage in Boston in 1976 in the Broadway-bound “Sly Fox,’’ starring George C. Scott, at the Wilbur Theatre.

Tambor credited Jill Soloway with creating a supportive, creatively charged environment on the set. “Jill really understands humor. She zigs where most people zag and zags where most zig,’’ he says. “You’re crying when you’re eating the cole slaw and you’re laughing at the funeral. Being a San Francisco kid of Hungarian-Russian parents, raised in a conservative Jewish family, that humor sings to me; it just sings.

“Maura’s life is not a perfect curve and that’s why people identify with her. People constantly tell me, ‘I know the Pfeffermans’ or ‘I am a Pfefferman.’ ’’

But it’s not a Pfefferman we see at the start of the new season; it’s rabbi Raquel (Kathryn Hahn), who last season broke off her engagement to Josh and who is now at a spiritual impasse. “She’s kind of lost the thread of her faith and she’s in a little bit of a crisis of belief which is a horrible thing, especially for a rabbi. So she’s unmoored, for sure, and her journey though this season is trying to feel clean again,’’ says Hahn, who also has roots on the Boston stage, appearing in “Dead End’’ in 2000 and “Ten Unknowns’’ in 2002 at the Huntington Theatre.

But it was her starring role in Soloway’s 2013 indie feature “Afternoon Delight’’ that “really cracked it open for me as a performer and also as a person,’’ she says.

Hahn’s comic timing and gift for improvisation are on full display in her scenes with Landecker, whose character Sarah, at Raquel’s urging, attempts to join the board of her local temple.

“I lobbied Jill — I’m not joking — to let me do stuff with Kathryn,’’ Landecker says. “I’m always concerned that everyone’s going to hate Sarah because of her rage, but I’ve had people tell me she expresses the thing in their lives that they never let anyone see. So maybe that’s her purpose, to show parts of herself we think are unlovable.’’

Hoffmann’s adventurous Ali begins season three as a women’s studies instructor still involved with philandering feminist Leslie (Cherry Jones) but seemingly headed for disillusion. “Our expectations are huge because we know that this show can do anything and get away with it because it does it so well,’’ says Hoffmann. “And I know Jill is only guided by what is real and true and expansive and curious and interesting and challenging. So in these small moments this season, my character takes small steps toward a huge cliff you know is coming.’’

Season three hints that Josh, disaffected with the music industry, might start a relationship with Shea (Trace Lysette), a trans friend of Maura’s that he meets at the birthday party. (With the exception of Maura, all the trans characters are played by trans actors.)

“It’s a constant deepening,’’ Duplass says of his character’s arc. “I realized that things are happening that I don’t understand; things that are way bigger than us, like these guys [Hoffmann and Landecker] becoming my sisters. It’s really the most profound, all-encompassing experience I’ve ever had other than becoming a parent. It’s similar to that. We feel it on the street when people come up to us.’’

Instead of doing press interviews, Soloway, who won her second directing Emmy at Sunday’s awards ceremony, delivered a one-hour “master class’’ lecture at the Toronto festival. But she’s the soul of “Transparent,’’ as each cast member attests, none more emphatically than Tambor. “I trust her with my life. She gave me the responsibility and the role of a lifetime,’’ he says. “I thought I was going to play Lear, but I get to play Maura.’’

Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.