[Source: BBC]
Former Downton Abbey actress Lily James’ transformation into Pamela Anderson is a “triumph” in a new series about the Baywatch star, critics say.
James appears in Pam & Tommy, which tells the story of how Anderson and husband Tommy Lee’s sex tape became the first viral video in the mid-1990s.
The British star’s portrayal is “an outright triumph, both of acting and of special-effects make-up”, Variety said.
The Hollywood Reporter agreed that she gives “a wonderful performance”.
She succeeds in “making Pamela less of a caricature with each episode”, the magazine’s critic Daniel Fienberg wrote.
James modifies Anderson’s “helium-voiced coo and her overtly sexual posture to reveal the young woman from Ladysmith, British Columbia, whom Hugh Hefner and a red bathing suit turned into a sensation”, he added.
The real Pamela Anderson hasn’t been involved in Pam & Tommy, which will be on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK from early February.
She hasn’t commented, but a source recently told Entertainment Tonight that she had found it “very painful” and that it was “shocking that this series is allowed to happen without her approval”.
James recently said she had unsuccessfully tried to get in touch with Anderson, and her “sole intention was to take care of the story and to play Pamela authentically”.
