Get ready to get angry when you settle in to watch The Thing About Pam. Renee Zellweger dons a bunch of prosthetics to play Pam Hupp, and while she is not unrecognizable, she certainly looks much closer to the real Pam than Zellweger ever could without a lot of movie magic.
As absolutely vile as a person Zellweger portrays on screen, real-life Pam Hupp is even more disgusting and dastardly. I recommend the six-part podcast by the same name if you really want to get into the dirty details of this case. Pam pretends to be everyone’s friend—everyone except her husband and kids, that is—and when her best friend, Betsy, is murdered, Pam can’t help but insert herself into the case over and over.
Wherever she goes, the story seems to follow, and also following that story is a researcher from Dateline, who sees a very different set of puzzle pieces than DA Leah Askey (Judy Greer), who refuses to believe the only one guilty is Betsy’s husband, Russ (Glenn Fleshler). Soon enough, Pam’s armchair expertise at getting away with murder starts to fall apart, and the lengths she goes to in order to stay out of the hot seat are unbelievable. (six 43-min. episodes)
—Anna Starkey
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 5, 2022.
