Following the premiere of the superhit Hulu seriesPam & Tommy, fans have lauded Lily James and Sebastian Stan for their portrayal of Pamela Anderson and her ex-husband Tommy Lee. In a new chat with ET at the final screening of the show on March 8, the actress opened up about how “surreal” the experience of playing the Baywatch star on screen was.
During the interview, James emphasized that essaying the character of a “real person” was always a “huge responsibility” but her accountability for the role grew much more because she had to play the part of Pamela. James shared, “She’s such an icon, I really love her, and I wanted to try and do her justice and try and capture her spirit and really explore what happened at that time and how she was treated and how things have changed, or not changed.” For those unversed, the series captures Anderson and Lee’s real-life story of what went down after their private sex tape was leaked to the public.
James went on to add, “We just worked so hard ’cause I was like, you can’t play Pamela and not like, you know, and I obviously do not look like Pamela. So, it took a lot of work, but it meant that I was able to believe myself in the role.” The actress had to go through intensive hair and make-up transformations to embody the character of the 90’s icon which even included a prosthetics team.
The Baby Driver actress also revealed that she and Stan were excited to see each other as Pam and Tommy and added, “We felt so in character and we really forgot ourselves.” James disclosed that this was in no way an exaggeration as the co-stars never met each other out of character besides the one or two times ahead of shooting the series. The situation got so severe that they had to re-introduce each other before starting the press tour for the series.