Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya; Cruella) approached Hulu’s Pam & Tommy with the goal of revisiting the 1990s scandal through the prism of modern sensibilities. Like many tangentially aware of the controversy, he assumed Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were in on the whole thing, the leaking of an extremely personal and graphic series of sexual encounters between a newlywed couple. A very famous newlywed couple.
However, once he started exploring the truth while preparing for the limited series, Gillespie discovered an entirely different version of this sex tape narrative.
Gillespie directs the first three episodes of Hulu’s Pam & Tommy. Within his episodes, he not only sets the ton and visual palate for the series, but he also introduces the basic events of the scandal while allowing the audience to know a different side of Anderson and Lee. Episode two, in fact, provided Gillespie the biggest challenge in that he needed to work through Lee’s courtship of Anderson without making him appear as a stalker. He also needed to help actors Sebastian Stan (as Tommy Lee) and Lily James (as Pam Anderson) work through their deeply committed transformations as Pam and Tommy without approaching caricature status.
Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Craig Gillespie talks about how he achieved all of this while working with the extraordinarily talented Stan and James. He also reveals what he hopes the legacy of Pam & Tommy will be for audiences willing to revisit the scandal with an open mind.
Finally, he opens up about directing a “talking penis” sequence.
Pam & Tommy streams exclusively on Hulu.
