The trailer for the hotly anticipated television show, Pam & Tommy has finally been released; and, oh boy, it’s stirring up mixed reactions. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, make sure you do so below.
Hulu’s original series, Pam & Tommy, will consist of eight episodes and will follow the very real whirlwind relationship that occurred in 1995 between Hollywood stars, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. The pair famously married after only knowing one another for four days and, rather infamously, made a sex tape on their honeymoon; which was subsequently leaked and became the first internet video to go completely viral.
This scandal will be the focus of the show Pam & Tommy, which Hulu describes as “the greatest love story ever told.”
Anderson is played by Lily James (Downtown Abbey, Baby Driver) and Lee is played by Sebastian Stan (Captain America, I Tonya) in Pam & Tommy, and other cast members of note include Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, and Taylor Schilling. With such a great cast, you may be wondering why there’s so much controversy surrounding the upcoming series.
While the trailer does show some incredible, albeit brief, performances from the cast, and a sincere congrats must go to the make-up team as Lily James is completely unrecognisable as herself and is almost identical-looking to the real Anderson, the trailer features some quite unsettling dialogue.
For example, Nick Offerman’s character upon finding and watching Anderson and Lee’s sex tape says “this is so private; it’s like we’re seeing something we’re not supposed to be seeing.” So the writers seem well-aware that what Nick Offerman and Seth Rogan’s real-life counterparts did was wrong.
And yet, despite the real-life Anderson and Lee not being involved at all with this series, the writers are happily bringing the scandal, which would’ve been an incredibly turbulent time for both stars (especially Anderson), back into the limelight over 25 years later.
While the real Anderson hasn’t publicly made a statement regarding the series, The Sun reported that a close friend of the Baywatch star said that Anderson has “no intention of watching this God awful show” and that the whole sex tape scandal “was one of the most difficult experiences of her life.”
“To have it dredged up for a TV show is pathetic. She won’t want to be reminded about it”.
The trailer does however seem to have one shining beacon of hope for the series; it features Lily James’ Anderson arguing with Sebastian Stan’s Lee that the sex tape scandal is worse for her, to which he retorts, “how is this worse for you?”. This seems to be an attempt at showing audiences that women are regularly treated differently, and ultimately worse than men, but men regularly dismiss that truth.
Perhaps, in light of this scene in the trailer, the show will actually focus on how Anderson was a true victim of the scandal and will make the public realise they owe her a long-overdue apology. Or, maybe it will just be another series that simply profits off the idea that sex (and sex tapes) sell.
Either way, we won’t be able to tell until Pam & Tommy premieres on the 2nd of February on Hulu and Disney+.
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