The First Trailer for Hulu’s ‘Pam & Tommy’ Offers a Gritty, Nuanced Take on the Mötley Crüe Drummer’s Sex Scandal

Joe Bielawa from MInneapolis, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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Back in December of 2020, it was revealed that Sebastian Stan, best known to the world as the Winter Soldier in Marvel’s Avengers franchise, would be portraying  Tommy Lee in a Hulu miniseries about the Mötley Crüe drummer’s explosive sex tape with his then-wife Pamela Anderson. Now, the first trailer for the miniseries, Pam & Tommy, has been released, and it does a good job of showing the human side behind this tabloid scandal.

As you’ll see in the trailer below, the focus of Pam & Tommy isn’t just the lurid nature of the Mötley Crüe drummer’s life and marriage, but also the troublesome invasion of privacy that came with the publication of their homemade sex tape. It would’ve been easy to make this series just a tawdry Hollywood sex story (and it kind of is, still), but instead the show showcases how tough it must have been for Lee and Anderson to see their private lives go public. There’s a really powerful moment where Tommy Lee says, “I’m on that tape, same as you,” and Anderson (portrayed by Lily James) responds, “Not like me, you’re not,” which really drives home exactly how the Baywatch star must have felt as a woman who knew how Hollywood works. Similarly, Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman, playing the guys who blew up the sex tape, are not portrayed as savvy capitalists, but rather total creeps who are perpetually unsure if they’re doing the right thing.

This take on the story might be why Tommy Lee was so chill about the show. “I know Sebastian, he’s playing me,” the drummer said in an interview. “From what he’s told me, it’s a really beautiful story. I think a lot of people would think it’s one thing, but it’s really about privacy and how things got crazy then. There’s different laws now….The story is actually cool, but what actually happened wasn’t. But he tells me it’s pretty wild.

Check out the first trailer for Pam & Tommy below:

Pam & Tommy comes out February 2nd, 2022, only on Hulu.

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Words by Chris Krovatin