The internet was aflame recently when the first images of stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan wholly transformed into Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were revealed, but audiences may be in for a surprise when they finally get to see the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The logline for the show is fairly simple: it chronicles how the infamous Pam and Tommy sex tape was stolen and released online. But according to director Craig Gillespie, the Hulu series will force audiences to acknowledge their complicity in this debacle, and will confront the emotional toll the ordeal took on Anderson and Lee.
The limited series – which is now in production – was written by Rob Siegel and DV DeVincentis, the latter of whom wrote on the critically acclaimed FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which similarly took an event we all knew about and forced us to look at it completely differently. Collider’s own Christina Radish spoke with Gillespie – who is directing Pam & Tommy – for the press day of his Disney movie Cruella, and he talked about how the show is similar to his Oscar-winning film I, Tonya:
“The writing is amazing on that. It’s funny, I was just so intrigued with the story and, in some ways, it’s very similar to I, Tonya with the surprise of it. There’s the victimization of the media and what happened with that tape that was such an affront to them, and how it really ultimately severely damaged their personal life and her career. There’s this situation with the public who snicker and go, ‘Oh, yeah, I know that story. They sold it.’ But people just don’t know the story.”
Gillespie continued, noting how Pam & Tommy makes us complicit in how we reveled in the release of the aforementioned tape:
“In a way, it, again makes us complicit, as a society and with the consumption of the media, that we do this without any consideration for the humans involved in it. It does that same interesting thing, where we go in being complicit because we wanna see it and relive this, and then halfway through it, we realize that we’re the problem, as an audience. You really get to land on an emotional human level with Pam, which is what they did so beautifully with the scripts.”
The filmmaker also addressed the tremendous transformation that Stan and James went through to inhabit the roles of Pam and Tommy, noting how they’re not wearing major prosthetics or anything – it’s entirely about nailing the behavior of the individuals:
“That’s just the physicality of it. [James has] so done her homework. It’s always a scary thing when you’re portraying somebody that’s a real-life figure that so iconic because there’s gonna be that scrutiny. People are familiar with Pamela Anderson. So, the homework she’s done, in terms of the body language and movement and voice, is incredibly impressive.”
Hulu hasn’t yet announced a release date for Pam & Tommy, but production is currently underway on the limited series.
Look for our full interview with Gillespie on Collider soon.
Reporting by Christina Radish.