‘The Thing About Pam’ Prosecutor Slams Judy Greer’s Portrayal as “100% False”

NBC’s The Thing About Pam is based on the true story of Pam Hupp, a Missouri woman who was charged with killing her co-worker, Betsy Faria, and framing Faria’s husband Russ for the crime. Russ called 911 after finding his wife’s body, which had been stabbed 55 times, and suggested that she killed herself. He was later convicted of murdering her, though the conviction was overturned when evidence against Hupp surfaced. The series is a fictionalized version of real-life events, and it based on five Dateline NBC episodes and a podcast which reported on Hupp’s crimes.

But one person who is taking issue with the way the show portrays her is Leah Chaney (formerly Leah Askey), the prosecutor who originally charged Russ Faria with murder and who is portrayed in the series by actress Judy Greer. Chaney said in an interview that her portrayal in the limited series is “fundamentally false, 100% false,” adding, “The way that they’re portraying me on this miniseries is the way that I have been portrayed over the last decade in all of the podcasts or the Dateline episodes, social media, or you name it. It’s not at all me, and it’s not at all what happened.”

Chaney faced harsh criticism for not investigating Hupp earlier in the case, and was even accused of conspiring with Hupp to cover up her crimes, an accusation she denies. “Our job is to take what law enforcement brings us and then to present that case to the best of our ability to the jury. And that’s what we did. And so I think I would I would have hoped that it would have resonated with [Greer], that we came to work to do our job. That’s it. And that’s what we did. And we did it successfully. And the aftermath of it has been unfortunate for a lot of people, but not because we or I did anything wrong. And that’s the way that it’s been portrayed. And that is very disheartening for me because there was never a time in that case or any other case where I would ever have prosecuted someone that I didn’t believe was guilty.”

Chaney also suggests that the series creators skewed the story toward the defense’s side of things, saying, “Consider the fact that the sources that have been utilized to create the miniseries have not at all been the prosecution, not at all been law enforcement. One-hundred percent of all of the information is derived from the defense and the defense attorney.”

Greer stated that she never met Chaney to prepare for playing her. “We are actors, so we’re not making a documentary, we’re making an interpretation of a true story,” Greer said. “We have to be allowed to have an element of interpretation when we bring our characters.”

The true-crime series consists of six episodes that will air weekly at 10/9c on NBC.

Where to watch The Thing About Pam