Image Source: The Guardian, Paper Magazine
‘Pam & Tommy’ starring Sebastian Stan and Lily James is just a few days away from the release and the cast and crew spoke to Variety to share their work experience.
Lily James shared that the two of them have barely met each other outside their characters that it was surreal for them to do a shoot together as themselves. In the interview, the two shared that they personally along with their team had put in a lot of work into being authentic with the characters they were playing on-screen. The duo shared that when the first pictures of their looks were out, the reaction from the audience and people who had known about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee couldn’t believe how similar the two of them looked.
Sebastian Stan said on the looks going viral, “I was blown away. The hair and makeup team deserve all the accolades that they can get.” ‘Pam & Tommy’ is about the infamous private tape between Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, which was stolen and was leaked online. As soon as the tape was leaked online, it broke the Internet and was shared and played at parties like it was contraband. The executive producer of the series D.V. DeVincentis said, “I remember hearing about it as if it was like a Yeti. Like, you couldn’t necessarily assume it was true. It had this sort of aura of a rumor, and something apocryphal. And then finally somebody put it in front of me and I saw it.”
Sebastian Stan shared, “It’s an important story, I think, from being able to understand what the impact of that media tornado was. For them as a couple but particularly for her as a woman. I can’t imagine what having a private home video stolen from you — how that wouldn’t impact a newlywed couple.” According to Variety the actors and makers of ‘Pam & Tommy’, is three stories in one, “a heist thriller retracing how the tape fell into the hands of a disgruntled construction worker; an unconventional love story about two celebrities whose relationship became more public than they ever could have imagined; and a societal critique on how the media, the justice system, and the public all failed Pamela Anderson.”
‘Pam & Tommy’, is adapted from a 2014 Rolling Stone article written by Amanda Chicago Lewis that explains how the tape got leaked and viral. Actor Seth Rogen is playing a crucial character i.e. Rand Gauthier as it’s him who finds the videotape and partners up with a porn-producer pal Milton ‘Uncle Miltie’ Ingley played by Nick Offerman and find a buyer for the tape. Seth Rogen shared with Variety, “Most people who are acting badly are doing so from a very simple place. I wanted to play Rand as someone who has very little going on in his head. Someone whose ultimately evil acts aren’t done out of some amazing and deep thought process, but actually out of a complete lack of thinking and caring about how his actions would affect other people.”
The chief content officer Annapurna shared with the publication, “The opportunity was to tell something that was emotional and funny and true and hard. There was an unfair cultural response in the ’90s. It bothered me then. And I think the chance to tell the story and to get people to see and understand how it was nobody’s business, it was nobody’s right.” Talking further D.V. DeVincentis shared that he was surprised by how much Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s story sort of rhymed with Marcia Clark’s. He added, “With Pamela Anderson, what I always come back to is that [she and Lee] were doing the exact same thing. And filmed doing the exact same thing together. And one of them was slut-shamed and virtually drummed out of the business and turned into an unserious person. The other was given a new act and turned into this sex god. And the only difference between these two people [was] their gender. That’s it.”
Director and executive producer Craig Gillespie who joined the project later shared, “I had the same preconceived notions I think a lot of audience members will have, which was, well, they were involved somehow, weren’t they? I just expected somewhere along the line, it must have worked out somehow for them. But then you see, they really got the wrong end of the stick on it. It was a terrible situation that they had to endure.”
Robert Siegel also shared his concerns with the fact that the audience had a lot of questions about why Lily James was finalized. He said, “Pam’s smart, shrewd, kind of wholesome; she grew up in small-town Canada. She has a real sweetness to her, and almost an innocence that we wanted to come across. In the first reactions to casting Lily, people on Twitter were like, ‘Why didn’t they cast Megan Fox?’ I was like, no, they’re not getting it.” DeVincentis added to this, “Also, it’s so enjoyable as creators and as an audience to experience reinvention. To watch somebody do something that is unexpected and that is a stretch, and that is new to them and to us as the audience. It’s a roll of dice. And I think people are going to be completely stunned at what they see with Lily James playing this role.”
For Sebastian, Robert said, “I thought there was a physical resemblance [to Lee]. And he is just a straight-up chameleon. He’s just one of these guys that disappears into characters.” Craig described the penis talking scene as ‘just awkward’ and added, “You’ve got four puppeteers working with an animatronic penis. And then, how much is too much, and do you start to lose his emotional torment of what’s going on? Hopefully it works.”
Robert Siegel added lastly, “The show loves Pam. So I hope Pam loves the show. She’s certainly the hero of the show. At every step of the way, we’ve tried to do right by her. From the writing to working very closely with Lily, who kind of grew into our custodian of the character.”
Information Source: Variety
