True Crimes

Renée Zellweger stars in a bizarre real-life murder story in NBC's The Thing About Pam

- By H. Alan Scott. Photographs by Frank Ockenfels 3, NBS, Vera Anderson and Getty Images

IF YOU'RE A DIRECTOR LOOKING to cast a female actor to play a real-life person, a handful of actresses come to mind, and one of those actresses is Renée Zellweger. She won an Oscar playing one of the most recognizable entertainers in Hollywood history, Judy Garland. Now she's taking these amazing skills of mimicry and applying them to her portrayal of alleged multiple murderer Pam Hupp in NBC's ripped-from-the-headlines miniseries The Thing About Pam. The series premiered March 8.

I want it to be responsible,” Zellweger tells Newsweek. “It's never to lampoon a person or humiliate a person.”

In the series, Zellweger dons a suit to make her appear larger, in addition to prosthetics to assist her transformation into Hupp. But before people even knew much about the part Zellweger was playing, pictures of her in costume set social media aflame with accusations of fatphobia and questions over why another actor who better physically fit the role was not cast.

This conversation is not new to Zellweger, whose physical presence has been a topic of obsession ever since the actress starred in Bridget Jones's Diary. Zellweger says she's been able to largely avoid the online chatter. “That's the fun of not being on social media. Who has time for that?” With that said, she does point out that those conversations about an actor's body often revolve only around female actors. “Can we just stop talking about women's bodies? Stop talking about women's bodies!

For The Thing About Pam, Zellweger used everything at her disposal to bring Pam Hupp to life, a difficult task considering the insane true story that inspired the series.

“The tragedy that's ongoing in this story that makes you stop for a second and really feel the gravity of the consequences.