Renée Zellweger has proven why she is a two-time Oscar-winner (for her roles in Judy in 2020 and Cold Mountain in 2004, of course) as she has one of the biggest ranges as an actress! And anyone who wants to disagree should simply look at the 52-year-old Hollywood star’s epic transformation for her role as convicted murderer, Pam Hupp in The Thing About Pam!
But it isn’t just her unrecognizable appearance (thanks to a combination of facial prosthetics – which included a fake nose – a strawberry blonde wig, and a fat suit) that Zellweger has blown us away with, as the first trailer for the NBC true crime drama has finally been released, and we can confirm that she really has embodied the “notorious,” to quote Zellweger herself, character.
The Thing About Pam chronicles the 2011 murder of Hupp’s friend, Betsy Faria (played by American Housewife‘s Katy Mixon) and the trailer really whets our appetite for the whole six-episode limited series. The murder case gripped the entire world after it featured on Dateline, and actually became one of the show’s most popular cases in history; and based on the huge amount of interest in the case, then had its own podcast which to this day, is one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes. Zellweger must have really felt the pressure!
Naturally we’re intrigued to see how the Chicago actress will play the role of the insurance worker who was implicated in at least two murders over the course of five years (before eventually being jailed after a prolonged cover-up.) Even more so because Zellweger confessed in an interview at BlumFest on October 1st last year that it was proving to be quite a challenge to get into character as there was so little to go on due to the lack of records associated with the case.
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Zellweger said that she was "trying to understand the character just based on the limited information that’s available," before adding: "I’m just going to keep my head down and do my work, try to research different personality types and try to understand whether or not that psychosis or solipsism or combination of both, whatever it might be. Either way it’s going to be interesting and there’s a lot to learn."
And as far as her unrecognizable appearance is concerned, Zellweger said that hearing that was the biggest compliment an actress could receive! "Oh, gosh, if you don’t recognize an actor or an actress in a performance, that’s a great compliment," the Jerry Maguire actress said in an interview with Vanity Fair. "You’re not trying to tell your own story," she added.
The Thing About Pam premieres Tuesday, March 8th at 10/9c. We've marked our calendars!
