Lake Bell says she used her experiences on late night talk shows to craft the Jay Leno scene in 'Pam & Tommy'
- Bell told Insider being a guest on late night shows is like walking into a "firing squad of judgment."
- She wanted that feeling in the "Pam & Tommy" scene where Anderson goes on "The Tonight Show."
In Wednesday's penultimate episode of "Pam & Tommy," Pamela Anderson (Lilly James) confronts the buzz around her sex tape with husband Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) head-on during an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
The director of the episode, Lake Bell, said in crafting Anderson's late night show appearance she used her own experience being a guest on the talk show circuit over her career.
"I've been there, I know what that walk from your dressing room to the stage is like," Bell told Insider. "It's walking into this firing squad of judgment. I wanted the viewer to feel that. It was important to me."
In the sequence, Anderson is on the show to promote her upcoming movie "Barb Wire," however, she knows Leno, who has made the sex tape a running joke for some time, will bring it up.
Bell said in the script it was written simply that Anderson is in her dressing room and goes out on stage to be interviewed by Leno. But Bell wanted to show more of the behind-the-scenes tension.
"I plead to have this tracking shot of the walk to the stage," she said. "That walk is like a ticking pressure cooker. You can be as prepared and performative and used to the spotlight as you like, but there's this sense of quiet behind the scenes that it's like walking to your fate."
Bell and Lily James did have some source material to study. Anderson really was a guest on "The Tonight Show" in 1996 promoting "Barb Wire" and she did call out Leno for joking about the sex tape.
"You're supposed to be my friend but you jumped on the bandwagon, everyone's making fun of us," Anderson said to Leno.
"I maybe told one little joke," Leno responded, however, then a reel played of numerous times Leno said "Pam and Tommy" in his opening monologues.
"It's not funny," Anderson said after the clips played. "This is devastating to us."
Bell uses that interaction between the two in the episode as a backdrop to capture Anderson's real feelings in that moment as she scolds Leno and everyone else for making fun of the situation. However, it's only an internal monologue that we the viewers see. Leno and his audience instead see a playful and giggly Anderson.
"It's a unique, grotesque weird thing that we all accept the premise," Bell said of doing late night talk shows. "I'm going to make fun of you all week and then you're going to come on and you have to go along with it."
"The truth is sometimes it's okay, but when it deals with basically the stealing of your soul which you did not strategically release to the world for some kind of fucking publicity stunt that's when it's bad," Bell added. "I really wanted the inward and the outward to be highlighted in that scene."
Bell also directed episode 4 of "Pam & Tommy." The actress-director told Insider last month that going through her own "humiliating" photo nude leak back in 2014 influenced how she directed her episodes of the show.
"Pam & Tommy" airs Wednesdays on Hulu.