Lily James, Sebastian Stan & Seth Rogen Open Up About Playing Real-Life People for 'Pam & Tommy'
Lily James poses alongside her Pam & Tommy co-stars Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen as they arrive at Deadline Contenders Television at Paramount Studios on Sunday (April 10) in Los Angeles.
The trio hit the stage for a panel, in which they discussed the challenges they faced while making the Hulu series.
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Sebastian explained that in order to play Tommy Lee, he consumed as much video and audio content from the Motley Crue drummer as possible. “It was like an everyday routine,” he said, per Deadline. “I had compiled a two-hour playlist of every single interview I could find, and I was running and trying to get 20,000 steps a day [with it] just on repeat.”
He went on to say Lily had taken a similar approach that was possibly even more extreme.
“Even between shots as they were setting up, [Lily was] listening to her constantly,” he said. “It was just a nonstop thing.”
There were also challenges posed by their physical transformations, with Lily sharing that the pair often had 3 a.m. call times due to the long process of getting makeup, tattoos and prosthetics applied.
“I think we were both kind of just hanging on by thread, texting each other, going like, ‘On a scale of one to 10, how horrible are you feeling about what we’re about to do?’” Sebastian acknowledged. “We finally got to put tattoos on, try the clothes, try everything, and then I think we both had that moment where we were like, ‘I think we’re gonna be OK, maybe.’ They both required such a massive transformation, I think, for both of us.”
Lily added that executive producer Craig Gillespie, who directed the first three episodes, wanted to make Pam and Tommy’s relationship feel as grounded as possible.
“Right from the word go, he really wanted this [to be] an opportunity to see them behind the camera, not when they’re displayed in an interview and being a sort of ‘on’ version – like, what were they like, intimately, privately together,” James said. “And obviously that took a huge leap of imagination, too. We can’t possibly really know, but we based on what we learned and read and watched that was the sort of where we landed,” she said.
Seth said that while he didn’t have the challenge of playing a recognizable public figure, he did have to work on toning down some of his own mannerisms.
“I know I’m inherently likable as an actor, and I didn’t want the character to be too likable,” he said. “Something that we actually tried to modulate, was how many of the things that I generally do as a performer that make me likable do I do? I don’t laugh in the movie at all. I don’t smile, really, ever. I don’t do any of the affable behaviors that I think make me someone that people feel like they know and can relate to.
“It is the instinct of a lot of actors, I’ve found, to like make their characters highly redeemable in some way, or they have to like something about the character,” he added. “I’m not that kind of actor – like, I liked nothing about Rand. I found him not a great person, by any means, and I found that he was not someone that I related to in any way.”
Seth also said that like his two co-stars, he never met his character’s real-life counterpart. “Rand grows weed in Northern California, so I might have met him organically just through my day-to-day life without knowing it,” he laughed.
Find out why Pamela Anderson will never watch Pam & Tommy…
Click through the gallery for 25+ photos of Lily James, Seth Rogen and Sebastian Stan…
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