In 1996, an intimate video of the couple at the time, actress Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, was stolen from the garage of their California home by an electrician seeking to collect what was owed to him. What this man named Rand Gauthier did, with the help of a pornographic producer, was upload the recording to the internet, which was already emerging in that decade. He did not earn a single dollar, but the producer bought several domains with which he managed the massive sale of videos for which he paid up to 175 dollars per unit. That is, it was the first video that went viral without social networks. But also, an intrusion into privacy and an attack on the two stars, mainly Pamela Anderson, the famous Baywatch girl.
For Australian director Craig Gillespie, (Cruella for Disney), now directing the series ‘Pam & Tommy’ was important ‘because it resonates in our days because of how women were treated at that time, to see what happened to her (Pamela Anderson) it was atrocious. And it is interesting to do it through the eyes of today,” he says during a Zoom meeting with various media outlets in the region and La República.
Gillespie reflects on the series that just premiered on Star+. “I think it is a conversation that goes to the warning, because it is something that continues to happen with all the misogyny that is out there, but there are already platforms that are speaking against it. These things did not exist before, and this has many disadvantages in the sense that we are still in this culture that does not help them very much, but they already exist, there is already where to turn if these things happen, which is probably what they (Anderson and Lee ) needed at that time.”
On the other hand, he adds that he enjoyed combining two genres in the production. “It’s been finding this dance between comedy and drama and it’s something I always try to gravitate towards because you find it in life all the time, we can be sad and laugh at the same time. It’s a parallel that I really enjoy.”
However, Gillespie is already facing criticism for tackling a story bordering on scandal, but insists that he treated the subject with great respect. “Everyone is entitled to an opinion. What we have done is empathetic work with these people, on their perspective, on what happened, that is what I have tried to project. It was an opportunity for people to approach this series with new emotions, especially with what happened to Pam,” he says.
According to Craig, it was not necessary to contact the real protagonists because they had a lot of material to create the characters. But neither does he take it as a relief that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee have not been directly involved in the project. “If they wanted to be involved, they would be welcome, but I think everything I’ve done was in the spirit of showing them in a more positive light and changing the narrative of what happened to them a little bit.”
About the work of Sebastian Stan and Lily James in the leading roles, he says: “I entered the project later, so when they introduced me to Lily I thought she was incredible. She is talented and dedicated, she was very into her role and all the way through she was very accessible and invested in her to get the process done. Sebastian is very good, it’s like blurring between comedy and drama, he engages in the scene while still being funny. There were very difficult scenes for him all the time and he had to be intimidating, but I knew he was going to be able to do it.”
What do you think was the most difficult part of portraying everything that happened?
I wouldn’t say it was difficult, but I was aware of the time we had to ground their relationship in the second episode and it had to be done in a drug-addicted, alcoholic way, full of passion. We had to tread carefully to connect in a romantic and sincere way. That episode is a bit different from the whole series, which has a share of drama and suspense. ❖