Getting inside the mind of a twisted killer.
Renée Zellweger is opening up for the first time about her upcoming role playing convicted murdered Pam Hupp in NBC's new limited TV series The Thing About Pam, based on Dateline's hit true crime podcast of the same name.
The series will focus on the twisted tale of Betsy Faria's 2011 murder. The two-time Oscar-winner will portray Hupp, who is currently serving a life-sentence in a Missouri prison for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, whose own demise is thought to be linked to Faria's bizarre unsolved killing.
During a BlumFest interview with Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison today, Oct. 1, Zellweger admitted she was "riveted' by the original podcast.
"It goes beyond just the peculiarity of the story or the audacity of the behavior of everybody involved. It's sort of a glaring illustration of currently topical social issues," she explained of what drew her to the project. "Like, for example, social bias or conscious or unconscious personal agenda and how they come into play in the America justice system. It also speaks to I guess you could call it white lady privilege in America. And also it kinda has an interesting look at the sad invisibility of middle aged women in America and how in the most bizarre circumstances it can work to someone's advantage, as is probably the case in Pam Hupp's story."
Zellweger continued of her fascination with the "diabolical" real-life story, "Whenever you can't turn something off or turn away from something and when you keep going back to it and discussing it over and over again, it must have some kind of relevance. And I felt like there was a lot to examine here. And it's so bizarre, like you said."
"Truth is stranger than fiction," she added.
Comparing Hupp to her Oscar-winning portrayal of Judy Garland, Zellweger admitted it will be more difficult to portray Hupp because there aren't decades and decades of records about her.
"She's notorious, not famous," she said, adding that she'll be "researching and trying to understand just based on the limited information that's available" as she prepares for the role.
"I'm going to play the person whose story you told," she told Morrison. "I'm going to play the person that you sort of illuminated in your podcast and try to understand what makes a person like that tick.
When asked if she's scared to step into the mind of a killer, Zellweger laughed, "I try not to think about that, Keith. I'm just going to keep my head down and do my work, try to research different personality types and try to understand whether or not that psychosis or solipsism or combination of both, whatever it might be. Either way it's going to be interesting and there's a lot to learn."
The Thing About Pam will also star Josh Duhamel, Judy Greer, Katy Mixon and Gideon Adlon.
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family)