Movie and Television Producer
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Tamara Trexler has a real love for SAG-AFTRA’s Nashville local. She has been enjoying being a member for 26 years. For the last six years, she has served on the distinguished Nashville Board of Directors, Convention Delegate and supporting President, Carla Contreras as her Vice President. Tamara serves three states as Vice President. She’s excited about new members and those who have transferred from other locals.
During the last few years, Tamara has been active in raising money for independent films and helping producers find distribution. She’s had the privilege of working with talented people. For Christmas season 2019, Tamara partnered with Nancy Bennett, former Vice President of Development at Lifetime. Their movie SWEET MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS kicked off the 2019 Lifetime Christmas movies. Tamara worked with Lifetime Television in the creation, development and production of a movie A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS STORY which debuted Christmas 2013 and played worldwide during the Christmas seasons thereafter.
The movie stars: Dolly Parton, Brian McKnight, Mary Kay Place and Desiree Ross. Over the years, this movie ranked in the Top 20 on several lists of Best Christmas Movies. In 2021, Lifetime named A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS STORY in their Top Ten Best Christmas movies produced. SWEET MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS was selected as the number one concept out of over 700 submitted to Lifetime. The movie starred
Megan Hilty and Marcus Rosner and ranked in the top ten of the Best TV Christmas Movies Produced in 2019.
Last year, “Elle” magazine recognized the movie in their top ten favorite Christmas movies. Both movies received the honor of opening the respective Christmas season in which they aired. A believer in educating students at any opportunity provided, Tamara premiered SWEET MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS live from Lifetime with the students and professors at the Watkins College of Art in Nashville.
Positive reviews for A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS STORY came in from all over the United States. The HuffingtonPost calls A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS STORY "a movie of hope and forgiveness." Tavis Smiley on “Tavis Talks” said, "Several members of my staff came to work last Monday raving about a new Lifetime holiday movie. My staff - white, African American, even a Jewish guy - loved the film because it was a compelling story, it dealt with racial stereotypes, snuck in a little Black history in a subtle way, and of course had a warm happy ending. It’s called, A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS STORY”.
Tamara and her team of producers crossed two racial barriers in producing this Christmas movie in 2013. They were the first to cast a mixed race family in any Christmas movie. The majority of the networks and producers followed their leadership. Tamara and team were the first producers to cast an African American teenage female singing country. Dolly Parton penned the beautiful ballad “Miss You Miss Me” sung by Desiree Ross in the movie. Dolly sang the song on her “Blue Smoke” album. Continuing her journey with ACCS director Eric Bross, Tamara was the Consulting Producer for AFFAIRS OF STATE, a feature film that screened at Cannes, at the American Film Market and was released by Lionsgate Entertainment. AFFAIRS OF STATE stars: Adrian Grenier (“Entourage”), Mimi Rogers (THE RAPTURE), Thora Birch (AMERICAN BEAUTY) and Julian McMahon (“Nip/Tuck”).
Tamara has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English-Journalism from Union University and Master of Arts degree in Communication Arts from the University of Memphis. In 1997, Union University selected Tamara as its first recipient of the Young Achiever Award.
University acknowledged Tamara’s accomplishments in founding her own traveling troupe of actors to perform their original plays during Tennessee’s Bicentennial years, 1995-1997. Tamara and Tennaissance Theatre brought the historical figures from the official Bicentennial Portrait by Tennessee artist Michael Sloan to life! The actors came from our talent pool, universities, high schools, the Tennessee Legislature and from Congress! For two years, actors directed by Tamara traveled all over Tennessee, Kentucky and at former Senator Fred Thompson’s invitation, performed Tennessee’s Music & Heritage at the Kennedy Center. Tennessee icons such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Davy Crockett, Sequoyah, W.C. Handy, Sgt. Alvin C. York, Andrew and Rachel and Andrew Johnson and James K. Polk came to life for adults and school children across Tennessee and Kentucky!
Clement portrayed James K. Polk for several performances across Tennessee. Tamara served as Congressman Clement’s acting coach for Polk and vocal/acting coach for Dr.
Hall (character portrayed) for the Washington, D.C. Congressional performance of “1776” at Constitution Hall. Surprised when asked, Tamara also coached Senator Fred Thompson (“Law & Order,” “The Hunt for Red October”) when he was John Hancock in “1776” at Constitution Hall. The senator explained that he had a case of stage fright, that he had never performed live on a stage! Tamara takes credit for his debut on Broadway in October 2013 in a state adaptation of John Grisham’s novel “A Time to Kill”.
Several Ensworth students of Nashville attended Tamara and her husband’s afternoon acting class for three years. Tamara loves teaching children “acting for the camera” and “acting for the stage”. The students performed a show at Ensworth at the end of the year.
One female student performed a role in a newly penned Tennaissance stage show as a young girl from the World War I times on Bethel College’s stage in McKenzie, Tennessee. This student went on to be a William Morris Agency agent in New York City after her college graduation. Tamara continues to teach one private student a year.
Her eldest student, over 70-years-old, was the former Tommy Cash, Johnny’s closest sibling. Tommy starred in a feature film which went to television. He also was in a Memphis series, “Million Dollar Quartet”.
Performing with BUBBLEGUM THEATRE of Nashville for several year was a joy for Tamara. Her favorite roles were of the Little Mermaid in “A Little Mermaid” and Miranda in a comedic version of “Rumpelstiltskin”. Her role of “A Little Mermaid” was in great demand as Tamara performed for fashion shows and events in the Nashville area. Her love of working with children began at Pull-Tight Players in Franklin when Tamara directed and produced a children’s
Christmas fundraiser for years resulting in the Pull-Tight Player of the Year Award.
A 2007 Telly Award winner as the writer/producer for a corporate training film and State of Tennessee short films, Tamara produced several fundraising videos for the Tennessee Financial Literacy Commission, a non-profit founded by Tennessee’s State Treasurer, David Lillard, Jr. The program is designed to assist teachers how to teach their students to manage money in grades K-8. Tamara coached the children on their roles as well as Treasurer Lillard.
As a Nashville Director of Film, Tamara met her goal of recruiting multiple films, commercial and industrial projects to Nashville in order to assist in making Middle Tennessee a viable production center. With the assistance of volunteers, Tamara created a new production directory for the city. The directory was awarded First Place in Marketing Worldwide for the Production Guide in City/County/Region, competing against hundreds of other cities in 26 countries in the Association of Film Commissioner’s International Locations 2001 GlobalTradeshow in Los Angeles. Tamara visited executives at the networks each time she went to Los Angeles. Her efforts along with other film commissioners who served Tennessee and Nashville, Butch Spyridon, former President and CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp, private business people along with IATSE Local 492 resulted into a TV series “Nashville” for the City of Nashville.
Tennessee economy enjoyed an over $400 million economy boost thanks to the series. Tennessee crew and talent had steady jobs for six years, equivalent to a manufacturing plant. Houses were paid off, children of the crew attended college, Tennessee actors became household names, songwriters in Nashville had huge hits and musicians had jobs. Nashville flourished with new hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions as thousands of new tourists came to the city.
While working for Al Gore, through letters to the Taiwan government and in a series of in person meetings with the Taiwanese Embassy officials, at age 22, Tamara convinced the Taiwanese officials as to why they shouldimmediately release four American missionaries from the prison in Taiwan which had been their home for many years. She also talked the South American government into helping her locate two Tennessee children who had been kidnapped. The children were reunited with their family.
Always concerned about safety, when working on Capitol Hill in DC, Tamara organized the Congressional interns to join her in lobbying the members of Congress in order to pass the legislation to raise the drinking age to 21-years-old across America. When you put on your seatbelt, you can say a special “thank you” to Tamara who penned the Tennessee Seatbelt legislation as a graduate student. Barbara Mandrell joined the student’s lobbying efforts, testifying how wearing a seatbelt saved her life in a horrible accident. Thousands of lives have been saved since the passage of this bill by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1985. Tennessee was one of the first states to pass the law, every state except New Hampshire now has a seatbelt law.
CHARLIE’S WAR, a film Tamara produced in Nashville and Wilson County, Tennessee is airing on Tubi and on Amazon Prime.
Movie stars: Oscar winner, the late Olympia Dukakis, three times Oscar nominated, Diane Ladd, former Oscar nominated Lynn Redgrave and the late Vernon Winfrey. Child prodigy and country music star Hunter Hayes has a supporting role in the movie. Tamara has been learning the distribution end of the film process as she has been working with Murphy Media of Los Angeles who is the distributor for CHARLIE’S WAR (Tubi & Amazon) and FUNNY VALENTINE (Tubi & Amazon), starring Anthony Michael Hall and Lord Jamar.
