Lily James Confirms What We Suspected All Along About Playing Pamela Anderson

Hulu's limited series "Pam & Tommy" offers everyone an inside look at how the most popular celebrity sex tape in history was ripped from the hands of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee and sold on the internet for everyone to watch. Posted online during the early days of the internet, the tape went down in history as the first-ever viral video. When the trailer was released, many questioned why it was even necessary to rehash the story, considering the sensitive subject and how Anderson never signed up for it in the first place.

"She had no involvement whatsoever" in the show, a source told Us Weekly. The "Baywatch" star also "won't be watching" despite the limited series being largely about her marriage to Lee. Lily James, the actor who portrays her in the show, revealed that she reached out to Anderson — just like Sebastian Stan met with Lee — to discuss the role, but to no avail. "I was really hopeful that she would be involved. I wish it had been different," James told Porter. "I was very hopeful that we would be in touch right up until we started filming ... My sole intention was to take care of the story and to play Pamela authentically."

To play Anderson "authentically" apparently also involved remaking the content of the controversial sex tape, which James felt was necessary for effective storytelling.

A series about the spread of a sex tape probably doesn't need to show the actual content of the tape (along with other raunchy scenes) to be able to convey the story truthfully, but according to actor Lily James, doing so was necessary for "Pam & Tommy." "We really felt that the sex scenes had to be a part of the story and had to be essential to the script and progressing their relationship and looking at what happened," she told The Sun.

Craig Gillespie, who directed the series, said that he felt optimistic about making the series even without Pamela Anderson's sign-off because they had the chance to change public opinion. He hopes that, upon watching, people will look at the whole situation differently. "The thing that gave me comfort was I felt like we really had an opportunity to change the narrative of this story, and to show it from a perspective that people can hopefully learn and grow from," he told Radio Times. "And I felt that we portrayed them in a very empathetic way. I thought the writers did a really nice job with that. So I felt that there was that opportunity, which was the hope."

While the series was greenlit without Anderson's blessing, writer Robert Siegel said that she's the "hero" of the story. "The show loves Pam. So I hope Pam loves the show. She's certainly the hero of the show," he told Variety. "At every step of the way, we've tried to do right by her."