Was Renée Zellweger’s Performance the Best Part of ‘The Thing

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Thing About Pam series finale, “She’s A Killer.”]

Whether or not you enjoyed NBC’s six-part dramatized take on Pam Hupp, Renée Zellweger’s performance in The Thing About Pam has to stand out. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if she ended up with an Emmy nomination as a result.

The series offered a look at the murder of Betsy Faria (Katy Mixon in the series), for which Betty’s husband Russ (Glenn Fleshler) was convicted, despite his claims of innocence. He was later exonerated. The crime led to a chain of events that ultimately ended with Pam (Zellweger) in prison — and in showrunner Jenny Klein’s take, a meta conclusion that saw her watching the series. It’s a story that became popular after several episodes of Dateline NBC were dedicated to it, as well as a 2019 podcast.

Real footage of Pam played over the closing credits, and it’s then that Zellweger’s performance really shines. “That was something that we really wanted to do to show the real life Pam and hearken back to all these moments in our series where we reflected her costume, her mannerisms. You can really see how transformative Renée was in her physicality, in her carriage, in her cadence,” Klein told TV Insider.

One moment from the finale that rings true as a result of seeing that footage is Pam reaching across the table for the pen (which she’d then use to stab herself in the neck in the bathroom) and water bottle in the interrogation room.

“Renée studied that video and she came to set, she knew exactly how to do it,” Klein said. “And I was stunned because we hadn’t gone too deeply into it in prep. I was like, ‘Renée, that’s exactly how she did it.’ And Renée said, ‘Oh, yeah, this is like a choreography. It’s like a dance, learning these movements are so specific to the moment.’ And she took it so seriously. I was totally blown away.”

It’s scenes and prep work like that that make her performance easily the most memorable part of the show, as it should be. But what did you think? Was Zellweger as Pam the standout from the NBC limited series? Let us know in the poll below.

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