Sebastian Stan Opens Up About the ‘Pam & Tommy’ Finale

Hulu’s Pam & Tommy reached its crescendo this week, showing us a few final bits of devastation before coming to an end. Just as Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and husband Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) think they’ve finally escaped the hell that was the sex tape scandal, a new horror arises: online video. Now that people can stream the video online whenever and wherever they want, the couple’s personal tape now belongs to the world. So what does that mean for Pam and Tommy as a couple? Nothing good.

Pam & Tommy is Hulu’s gripping retelling of the sex scandal that rocked America in the mid-1990s. A few months after their whirlwind courtship, newlyweds Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee found themselves burgled by a disgruntled contractor. Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) stole Tommy Lee’s personal safe, expecting it only to be full of valuable jewelry, guns, and petty cash. He found all that and more: a private tape made by the couple on their honeymoon, never intended for anyone’s eyes but their own. Gauthier teamed up with friends from the world of pornography to sell the tape via the internet. It soon became a viral sensation, flooding the marketplace and ruining the reputations of its subjects.

The final episode of Pam & Tommy premiered today and leaves the formerly blissful lovebirds on a sour note. Decider caught up with Sebastian Stan recently to chat about the final episode of Pam & Tommy, working with Lily James, and what he most hopes audiences take away from the Hulu series.

DECIDER: I know that you mentioned in an interview recently, that one reason why you wanted to do [Pam & Tommy] was to work with Craig Gillespie again. When I talked to him before the show came out, he was super effusive about working with you on I, Tonya and bringing you back. What is it about him that you like working with so much? And how would you describe that working relationship?

SEBASTIAN STAN: It’s just, it’s trust, and he knows what he wants and he usually has the most uncommon thought on a common matter. (Laugh) It’s the one idea you haven’t thought of that sort of unlocks, the whole scene or the whole thing. He just has a really good radar for the temperature of the scene and the tone, and I feel he’s tackled very difficult subjects as a result of it because he really understands how to balance humor in certain difficult situations. And I just felt I did some of the best work with him, certainly on that movie and on this, you know.

Your character, Tommy – obviously, horrible things are done to him through the distribution of the sex tape, but he also does some not-so-great things. Did that ever occur to you that there was a kind of a moral tight rope that you had to play with this character?

Well, I think all human beings, and I, again, when I look at characters, whether they’re real life or you know, based on real life people or fictional, all human beings are complex and there’s flaws. There’s no such thing as a perfect human being. And there’s always a dance between good and doing good things and doing bad things. I mean, it’s just, it’s complex. The tight rope itself in life is very you know, thin and we all walk that line. So that’s just realistic to me.

Your co-star Lily James is extraordinary in this. Did you have any idea on set that you were just watching this transformative performance taking place? And have you guys, I mean, obviously you guys were in character most of the time, have you talked about the friendship off-set? What was it like working with her?

I love working with her and again, there was so much commitment from her and she was so protective of Pamela and so conscious and aware, and so often spoke very much about the work and what she was trying to do her best to represent somebody with such shoes to fill as Pamela Anderson. And I do feel that she really did an incredible job and I was front and center to it, and I was blown away by it simply because even halfway through, I turned to somebody and I went, ‘Isn’t, isn’t Lily from England?’ (Laugh) ‘Like shouldn’t she have an accent?’ Cause I hadn’t heard it, you know? I’d forgotten that she had an accent. And then it really wasn’t until like the last day of shooting. Finally we wrapped and then there was a small get-together of some sort and she showed up and she didn’t have the wig and the blue eyes and everything. And I was like, oh my God, this is, this is you.

I want to ask about the finale. One of the darker parts of Tommy is that he was arrested for domestic assault and served jail time for that. The show doesn’t really show us that, but definitely hints at that. There’s the scene where he flips the table. There’s the coda. There’s the bar fights. How did you feel about how his anger was depicted in the show? Do you think it’s important that we didn’t see him strike Pam? What did you think as an actor of that choice in the writing?

Well, again, our show and the script really focused on the beginning of their relationship and everything that you’re bringing up took place much later. I think the purpose of our show was really showing the impact of this crime and the stolen tape and what essentially it invited into their life as a newly married couple who were just getting to know each other and trying to have children and navigating potentially being parents and then just dealing with the fallout and the overwhelming kind of attention and invasion that they felt. So I think in that sense, it felt like the scripts were well-researched.

There are moments in the series where you’re manic and scary, but also absolutely hilarious. How important was it for you to find that line with Tommy and was there a certain scene for you that you thought was the funniest distillation of his character in all situations?

I mean, I watched so many YouTubes and interviews over and over again and music videos and going all the way back to, you know, the eighties and then all the way up to now. Especially just all the stuff with the drums for me was the scariest, but also sort of the most exciting in a way, because when you’re watching him in concert, there is a serious… I don’t know, his body just sort of swallows music and just experiences it in this very odd way. And he has a real energy to playing the drums and you can see it manifest itself even in how he talks and in day-to-day life. So it was just more about focusing on that energy. And particularly with the drums, it felt like he played with such passion and commitment. So I just wanted to try and get as close to that as possible, even though I only had three months of preparing,

Looking back at the whole like eight episode series, is there a certain scene or episode that you’re particularly proud of? Whether it’s the work or just how it makes you feel as an audience member watching it back?

I was blown away when I read the scripts simply because I felt like as an audience — even reading it one of the first times — I read it, I felt like I went on this journey and I sort of kind of got thrown into it with sort of this insane, unbelievable connection full of fire and passion that transpired in four days where it seemed so intoxicating and kind of childish and innocent and pure. And then suddenly, just as I was starting to kind of understand a little bit of that or getting pulled into that, suddenly it started to take this other turn and so much more was getting revealed about, kind of in a complex way, about what had happened or what we could speculate had happened because we will never really essentially know, right?

It’s just based on, to some extent, on the Rolling Stone article. And there are some things there that are very clear and I think everybody wanted to make sure that it was understood that they had nothing to do with this coming out. And by the way, that is still something that people don’t actually know. Something that people still had mentioned to me when they had heard I was a part of this and made me feel like even more importantly that we’re making sure that they understand that it was stolen property from them.

But essentially I felt, you know, it’s a tricky show. It’s a tricky show and I do feel like sometimes humor, as long as there’s a purpose and there’s thought behind it, can help us process difficult things in a way, and understand trauma in some ways as well. And I felt like between Craig starting us off and then passing over the baton to Hannah Fidell and Lake Bell, it felt like there was enough perspective there to honor that balance.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Where to stream Pam & Tommy