Lily James has said she was “a real wreck” after filming Pam & Tommy, describing the process as “screwed up”.
The British actor played Baywatch star Pamela Anderson in the recent Disney+ drama about the theft and distribution of her private sex tape with then-husband Tommy Lee in the 90s.
It has been well documented how Lily completely immersed herself in the role, even speaking with Pamela’s voice when she was not on set during the duration of the shoot.
Lily has now told The Mirror that it nearly resulted in her having a breakdown, saying: “It was such a screwed-up process.
“You just have to be patient with yourself. The hours are so long and you feel really burnt out. Your nervous system is just like, shot to shit.
“I felt like a real wreck at the end of it.”
Speaking of her method approach to playing Pamela, she continued: “I’d go around in a blonde wig because I just felt that I needed to hold on to her a little bit.
“The difference from me to her was too extreme to go back and forth. So, I had to stay in this middle no man’s land of like Lily/Pamela most of the time. I would totally slip into her voice.”
She added: “Even when I went out for dinner and was ordering with the waitress or talking to my mom on the phone, I would be American.”
Lily previously admitted she believes she had “lost lots of jobs because I keep speaking like Pamela in any audition”.
In an interview with Gold Derby, she added: “I had a prosthetic forehead, I had teeth, I had contact lenses, I had hair, I had boobs. It was so freeing to look in the mirror and see someone else.
“All through that four hours in the morning I would watch videos of her. She speaks really fast so I would have vocal exercises. It would take four hours for me to spiritually and physically get there.”
Pamela Anderson has so far remained completely silent about the drama, although quotes from a “source” to Entertainment Tonight suggested earlier this year that she found the release of Pam & Tommy “very painful” and “shocking”.
Lily previously claimed that her attempts to contact Pamela in the lead-up to playing her on screen went in vain.
Pam & Tommy is available to watch in full now on Disney+.
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