Pam is not an appealing woman. What made you take on the role? She’s fascinating. What an interesting and complicated story. Like millions of people who listened to the Dateline podcast, when I first heard it, I thought, Wow. It speaks to so many current topical issues, and socially important issues. So, I felt like, let’s tell this story. Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Why didn’t people see Pam for who she really was and believe what she was doing? There are people who live next door to us, go to church with us, that we see at the supermarket, who are so familiar to us that we just make assumptions about who we think they are. Pam fit certain social markers that made it very easy to draw conclusions about who she might be. She wasn’t somebody you might suspect of anything. Are you finding that these true-crime stories are stranger than fiction? Always, which is why I think they’re so popular. Well, it’s always been that way, right? Truth is stranger than fiction. When you listen to the Dateline podcast on Pam, you think, This escalating absurdity, it’s just hard to believe. I think the juxtaposition of the oddity with her place in the community as a well-liked, very kind, helpful person is what makes it so compelling. The physical transformation into Pam had to be challenging because it is so complete. If I didn’t know it was you, I wouldn’t know it was you. What was the process? Well, I just sat in the chair. It was [makeup artist] Arjen [Tuiten] who did all of the work. Arjen and Benadryl. I’m allergic to adhesives, and so there was a lot of comedy in the preparation. But, yeah, we’re physically different and so we tried to re-create a similar kind of appearance for her. [According to Variety, Zellweger spent 80 minutes having prosthetics applied before hair, wardrobe and makeup: “We had cheek pieces that went all the way up to the temple,” Tuiten told the publication. “There was the chin piece, the nose piece, a neck piece that went all the way around.” For Bridget Jones’s Diary you famously gained weight. Did you gain weight for this, because Pam was built a bit differently from you? With Bridget, I had an opportunity to originate the character for film, and so the process was really, really different. I wanted Bridget to look like her lifestyle as per how [author] HelenFielding imagined her. But with this, the parameters were set, and I wanted to as closely emulate Pam in order to be as authentic as possible. And JudyGreer did it as well, for the role of DA LeahAskey, as did JoshDuhamel, who played JoelSchwartz, RussFaria’s lawyer. And GlennFleshler, who played RussFaria, he did as well. KatyMixon as well. We all together just wanted to make it as authentic as we could. You’ve done television before, but this is your network television debut in a limited series, which is much longer than a movie. Do you enjoy having more time to tell a story? I think so. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. But yeah, I guess it is an opportunity to dive into it more comprehensively and to better understand. There’s time to tell more of a story, obviously. I have not had that experience before. In addition to acting, your company is part of producing this project. So did NBC come to you? Was it an idea you brought to them? And are you enjoying that behind-the-scenes aspect of it? Yes, yes, enjoying it very much. I really like developing material. It’s fun to find something that feels worthwhile and then carry it forward. With Pam, I think we all had the same idea at the same time, because like millions of people, we were fascinated by the Dateline podcast. That’s where I first heard about Pam Hupp. I was driving Chester, the German shepherd, up and down [California’s highway] the 5 to UC Davis for his hip-replacement surgery. And I was binging the podcast on the drive. And I thought, Wow, there’s something to explore here certainly. This isn’t the first real-life person you’ve played. Most outstanding of course was Judy. What is the challenge in taking on a real-life role? Is that more exciting than creating a character from scratch? No, it’s just different. It’s a different experience. I wouldn’t say more exciting. The parameters are set and so there’s a different kind of responsibility that comes with that. So there’s certain things you have to pay attention to, be careful with and respectful of when you’re exploring somebody’s actual history versus finding something, a character in your imagination. There’s a difference. With Pam, was there footage to watch to get her mannerisms and speech patterns down? Yes, yes, there were several interviews and then there’s a lot that’s public domain. And so, yeah, there’s a lot to look at and a lot of audio to listen to. And then there were folks that we spoke with to get firsthand accounts. You have a film coming up called The Back Nine, the story of Casey Jones, a female golfer. Are you a golfer or will you have to learn? I’m not a golfer, but I will need to be; I will definitely need to be. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. Is she a real person or is that fictional? She might be based on someone who the writers knew. But I haven’t had that conversation yet. I don’t think so. I think she’s a fictional character. What’s it like being so well known for playing Bridget Jones, the unlucky-in-love Londoner, in three rom-com films? I love Bridget. She makes me laugh. There’s nothing more fun than going to that set. What a gift that experience has been. I make friends everywhere I go around conversations about Bridget. It’s a pretty special thing, because we all share the same embarrassments and public humiliations. You write, in addition to acting and producing. Will you write a memoir? Oh, gosh, I’m not that interesting. I’m honestly not. The most interesting things about my life other people write and make up. So, I think whatever’s out there on the internet or tabloids is much more interesting than something I could put together in my living room. What kinds of things do you like to write? I write short fiction and I write poetry, and I write lyrics and music and prose. I’ve started a couple books. I like to write children’s fiction and I like to write short stories. Anything you’re going to get published? We’ll see. I like the process of it, and that’s usually plenty for me, but we’ll see. You took some time off from acting for a while to live your life. What’s it like to be back? Did you come back with a fresh attitude about it? Definitely, and the Judy experience was a really nice way to step back into it. Going to work quietly under the radar for an extended period of time before we actually went to film. It just reminded me how much I really love the process and how important it is to me. You did Chicago, which was a musical. Judy wasn’t a musical but had music in it. Would you love to do another musical? With West Side Story, it seems like musicals are hot. Oh, absolutely. I’d love to. It’s just so much fun. A whole different creative experience. Next, 32 True Crime Podcasts Worthy of an Immediate Binge-Listen
