‘Pam & Tommy’ EPs & Director Craig Gillespie On Double Standards & Subverting Expectations With ’90s Sex Tape Couple – Crew Call Podcast

Anthony D'Alessandro
·2 min read
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For all the shock and awe that the Hulu series Pam & Tommy has to offer on the tortured romance of Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson and priapic Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, creator/EP Robert Siegel, EP D.V. DeVincentis and EP/episodic director Craig Gillespie saw a whole other, higher layer in the couple’s story.

. - Credit: Deadline
. - Credit: Deadline

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True, their source material in the Rolling Stone Amanda Chicago Lewis article provided insight into a tabloid story we didn’t know; specifically that the couple never leaked the tape, but rather it was stolen and exploited by Rand Gauthier, a contractor who was gypped by Lee.

However, a double standard prevailed in the throes of the couples’ crisis, one which resulted in Lee getting a second career, and Anderson being, well, arguably canceled at the time.

Gillespie has a flair for giving such black ink tales a three-dimensional luster, i.e. his Oscar winning I, Tonya about fallen Olympian figure skater Tanya Harding.

His take on retelling Pam & Tammy: “It’s kind of shocking to see, just to be able to hold a mirror up, to see what our culture was like back then, and how women were treated, and see the normalcy on talk shows and interviews that as a society, everybody was OK with bizarrely.”

“We’re complicit in the consumption of us and what we’re doing without any regard for the individual,” asserts the filmmaker.

He adds, “You get to come into this show with expectations that we already have, these opinions and we’ve already formed, and then subvert them.”

We talk with the trio about how they pulled that off, as well as the jaw dropping transformation by Baby Driver‘s Lily James into Anderson.

Our conversation is below:

 

 

 

 

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