Deadline –‘Pam & Tommy’s Lily James & Sebastian Stan on Contenders TV.
The full Deadline awards contenders video panel featuring Sebastian, Lily James, and Seth Rogen is now available to view in the link above. Screen Captures have also been added to the gallery.
Sebastian Stan still remembers the piece of acting school advice that fueled him through his early career all the way up to where he is today. “Bring the day with you to work, or to the audition, or to the meeting,” he says in this episode of “In the Envelope.” “You’re on the subway, you’re running late, you’re trying to get to the audition, and then someone bumps into you and you spill coffee, and you’re pissed off…you might as well just own it. Then you’re starting from an honest place.”
One of the most versatile performers working today, Stan has made a career out of balancing blockbusters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with ferocious smaller-scale character work. The actor followed up an appearance in the biggest box office success in history, “Avengers: Endgame,” with an admirable streak of electric—and occasionally stomach-churning—roles in dark dramas and thrillers like the cannibal potboiler “Fresh” and Hulu’s pitch-black true-story comedy “Pam & Tommy.”
You can check out the interview wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts (Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio etc) — or simply hit the play button below via Spotify!
Deadline –‘Pam & Tommy’s Lily James & Sebastian Stan Sweated The Details While Seth Rogen Played Against Type – Contenders TV
For Pam & Tommy‘s Lily James and Sebastian Stan, capturing the essences of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, in the public eye and privately, while also re-creating their uber-famous images were the central challenges of the Hulu miniseries. Conversely, Seth Rogen found himself working to dial down the many mannerisms that have made him one of contemporary Hollywood’s most likable stars.
Appearing together during Deadline’s Contenders Television panel, the trio revealed the unique approaches they took to convincingly play two enduring ’90s icons in ways both recognizable and revealing, as well as the figure — largely unknown to the general public — who pushed the celebrity couple’s infamous sex tape into the pop culture stratosphere.
Stan explained that to play Lee, he incessantly consumed video and audio of the Mötley Crüe drummer from the era. “It was like an everyday routine,” he said. “I had compiled a two-hour playlist of every single interview I could find, and I was running and trying to get 20,000 steps a day [with it] just on repeat.”
Stan noted that James employed a similar routine to channel the Baywatch actress, to an even greater extreme.
“Even between shots as they were setting up, [Lily was] listening to her constantly,” he said. “It was just a nonstop thing.”
Externally, they were aided by hair and makeup teams that meticulously transformed the actors’ physiques into uncanny doppelgangers for Anderson and Lee. “All the 3 a.m. wake-ups, because he had all his tattoos and I had prosthetics,” recalled James. “It was a long process every day to sort of make that change into someone else.”
“I think we were both kind of just hanging on by thread, texting each other, going like, ‘On a scale of one to 10, how horrible are you feeling about what we’re about to do?’” admitted Stan, who said the nail-biting continued right until their first camera test in character. “We finally got to put tattoos on, try the clothes, try everything, and then I think we both had that moment where we were like, ‘I think we’re gonna be OK, maybe.’ They both required such a massive transformation, I think, for both of us.”
Outside of the imagery familiar to the public, James explained that executive producer Craig Gillespie, who directed the first three episodes of the miniseries, pointed the actors toward finding an authentic sense of behind-the-scenes intimacy between the couple.
“Right from the word go, he really wanted this [to be] an opportunity to see them behind the camera, not when they’re displayed in an interview and being a sort of ‘on’ version – like, what were they like, intimately, privately together,” James said. “And obviously that took a huge leap of imagination, too. We can’t possibly really know, but we based on what we learned and read and watched that was the sort of where we landed.”
In playing Rand Gautheir, Rogen knew he didn’t have to summon a long-established public figure; instead, he had to downplay his own innate likability.
“I know I’m inherently likable as an actor, and I didn’t want the character to be too likable,” Rogen said. “Something that we actually tried to modulate, was how many of the things that I generally do as a performer that make me likable do I do? I don’t laugh in the movie at all. I don’t smile, really, ever. I don’t do any of the affable behaviors that I think make me someone that people feel like they know and can relate to.
“It is the instinct of a lot of actors, I’ve found, to like make their characters highly redeemable in some way, or they have to like something about the character,” he added. “I’m not that kind of actor – like, I liked nothing about Rand. I found him not a great person, by any means, and I found that he was not someone that I related to in any way.”
And like James and Stan, Rogen never met his onscreen alter ego in real life – as far as he knows. “Rand grows weed in Northern California, so I might have met him organically just through my day-to-day life without knowing it,” he laughed.
Flaunt — Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan | Because Nothing Tastes as Good as a Great Date on the Town.
Ever had a bad dinner date? It’s not the law of attraction—rather the law of averages—that ensures anyone putting themselves out there on the love-seeking scene today will encounter their fair share of whackjobs, weirdos, and ghosts. But no dating disaster you’ve been through could be worse than what befalls the characters in gripping new Rom-Com/ Horror film, Fresh (Hulu). Starring young British actor Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) and seasoned leading man Sebastian Stan (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I, Tonya, The Martian), Fresh begins by exploring the dynamics of the contemporary dating world… before crossing the boundaries of… taste…
Stan plays Steve, a handsome, single doctor who accidentally (but we realize later, of course, on purpose) strikes up a conversation with Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Noa in the produce aisle. It’s all so natural. They exchange numbers. He texts her. They go on a date. It’s a good date. Since they met IRL and not through an impersonal app interface, they skip a few steps and quickly get intimate. Noa’s best friend, Mollie, (played with verve by Jojo T. Gibbs) finds Steve’s lack of digital presence disturbing, but enjoying the love-buzz, Noa throws herself into her exciting new romance.
But Noa’s soon to find out—the very hard way—that behind this charming facade, ‘Steve’—a pseudonym—is really quite something else. Instead of the sophisticated getaway he promises her, she’s face to face with primal fears, and her sweet, sensitive lover is revealed to be a mix of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and American Psycho, prone to Patrick Bateman-style musical interludes as he … well, that would be giving it all away. Suffice to say, in classic horror movie style, trapped in a mysterious house in the woods, Noa has to find a way to get out… And Fresh—directed by Mimi Cave, written by Lauryn Kahn, and produced by Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Vice)—is the clever, knowing, and full of suspense result.
Flaunt caught up with Daisy and Sebastian in London about Fresh, cuisine, and how they found a friendship in the midst of horror.
So how is London treating you?
SS: I think it’s been good, it’s only been 24 hours now since we’ve been here. But it’s been good—the rain is here, of course. A nice, cloudy, rainy day.
DEJ: I love it when it’s rainy in London— it’s my favorite! It’s so, you know, romantic and lovely when it rains.
Daisy, you are of course a born and bred London girl. It must be nice to be home. But you’ve lived in London before, haven’t you, Sebastian?
SS: Yeah! I was in London In 2003, when I did a year at the Globe Theatre; my college, Rutgers University, had a program at the Globe, so that was the first time I was here. In 2010, I basically lived here for a year do- ing Captain America: The First Avenger, and then I was in and out of London. And then in 2019, then the pandemic, and I lived here for another six months doing another project. So, I really do like it here.
Oh, so you’re basically a local with all of that experience.
SS: Almost.
DEJ: Practically a Londoner. He still hasn’t had a Sunday roast, though. That, to me, is shocking.
In all those years?
SS: I didn’t even know what that was—because usually Sundays, I keep to myself.
Right.
SS: And I was always in the hotel room crying.
Well, hopefully, you’ll have more than 24 hours on this trip, and it will include a Sunday. And a roast… So, sticking with the food theme, the subject at hand is your fantastic new film, Fresh, which I keep reading as “Flesh.” Is that just me?
DEJ: No, it’s not just you, actually, we’ve had a couple of people go, ‘I’m really excited to see Flesh!’ Well, you will see flesh in Fresh… perhaps not in the best way.
So, to Fresh. I watched it yesterday, and to be honest, I’m still kind of a bit traumatized. What was it like to work together on what is, let’s say, a very strange, post-modern ‘romance’?
SS: I guess it was bittersweet in some ways, right, because we had such a good time shooting it. We weirdly shot it chronologically, in the sense that we started it from the beginning of the story, and then… We were having so much fun kind of doing the scenes and finding the banter and the spontaneity of it, that we were always dreading the second half of the film coming at us. But we managed to keep going. Continue reading
lofficielusa.com — The Fresh actor shares his thoughts on playing a cannibal, doing a comedy, and working opposite strong female leads.
You’ve seen him as the charming rogue in Gossip Girl, the face behind Marvel’s Bucky Barnes, and in the tattooed skin of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, but Sebastian Stan’s latest role is Steve, the handsome “psychopath” looking for love in Hulu’s new film Fresh. Thinking back on his filmography, Stan says he “wouldn’t want to be any of the characters” he’s played (his past roles include Tonya Harding’s ex-husband/convicted criminal Jeff Gillooly, a CIA agent-turned-mole, and a dirty cop, to name a few), but the Pam & Tommy star would like to brighten things up and do a comedy in the future—specifically name-dropping Judd Apatow as a wish-list director. Stan has also always enjoyed rom-coms, specifically Hugh Grant’s work in Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. While talking about his favorite movies, L’OFFICIEL Hommes’s Spring 2022 cover star walks us through the highlights of his career and where he’d like to see it go next.
lofficielusa.com — Sebastian Stan Opens Up About ‘Pam & Tommy,’ ‘Fresh,’ and ’90s Rom-Coms. In conversation with his former costar Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan shines a light on how he gets into character both physically and mentally, from roles like rock legend Tommy Lee to a charming psychopath in Fresh.
Sebastian Stan has lived many lives. From his breakout role as disgraced prep-school bad-boy Carter Baizen on Gossip Girl to Marvel’s Bucky Barnes, Stan has largely managed to fly under the radar. That is, until now. Starring as Mötley Cru?e drummer Tommy Lee in the hit Hulu series Pam and Tommy has planted Stan squarely in the spotlight. The miniseries, which also stars Lily James as Pamela Anderson, follows the untold story of the infamous sex tape seen ‘round the world, which was stolen and leaked during the wild early days of the Internet.
His latest role sees Stan explore the horrors of modern dating in Hulu release Fresh, where he stars alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones as Steve, a seemingly nice guy who is not at all what he seems. “The movie explores the idea of this hero complex, which fucks up all our relationships with each other; the idea that there’s a knight in shining armor that’s gonna come and save the day,” Stan says. “I’ve certainly fallen into the trap of wanting to be that strong guy who isn’t going to be vulnerable.”
Exclusively for L’OFFICIEL, Stan speaks with friend and former costar Margot Robbie about transforming himself for a role, on-set chemistry, and his favorite rom-coms.
— Sabrina Abbas
MARGOT ROBBIE: I’m gonna start way back at the beginning, when you were conceived—no, I’m joking, not that far. We physically met during the chemistry read for I, Tonya, but I had seen your tape before. I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I didn’t recognize you at all. I think you were wearing a turtleneck and you may have even grown the ‘stache. I remember being like, “Wow, this actor is so good, who is this guy? He’s going to be such a find.” And then I looked you up and I was like, “Holy shit, it’s the hot guy from Gossip Girl and those Marvel movies!” Since then, I feel like you just keep transforming. I wanted to ask you about the more physical transformation, particularly when it comes to Pam and Tommy and Fresh. Is that something you find helpful?
SEBASTIAN STAN: I feel like the physical stuff always helps us, right? Because I’m such a self-conscious person with regard to my “Sebastianisms.” Having to morph into something that’s not really you is scary, but it stops me from judging myself.
MR: Do you wanna know a Sebastianism that I’ve noticed? You cover half your face with your hand when you laugh. I love it.
SS: [Laughs.] Yeah, I do do that. That’s also my favorite emoji, by the way.
MR: But I totally get what you’re saying. I feel like the less I look like myself and the less I sound like myself, the more separate I am from the character. That being said, what drives you to make the choices that you make? Even if I hadn’t worked with you, and I didn’t know you, I know I would be a fan of yours because of the risky characters you play and the projects you sign onto with so many first or second-time directors.
SS: This line of work takes a lot out of you, so I think it’s about finding something that you can really sink your teeth into so that you can justify the sacrifices you make. It’s funny, but a lot of the answers to these questions go back to I, Tonya. That experience honestly raised the bar for me. Between you and [the director] Craig Gillespie and the great script and amazing team—it was the first experience I had where I witnessed filmmaking as a machine. Working with you was a lightning bolt moment for me, because I realized I was at my best opposite strong women. I’ve gotten to work with Jessica Chastain and Julianne Moore and Lily James, and I feel like that’s my lane.
MR: It sounds like just a nice thing to say, but I’m only as good as the actors that I work with. When we did the I, Tonya chemistry reads, I tried not to get my hopes up about anyone in particular, but with you, one minute in and I was like, This is it! Did you get to do chemistry reads for Pam and Tommy or for Fresh? Or did you just get lucky and happen to have great chemistry with both costars?
SS: I didn’t. The script in Fresh had these ridiculous dance sequences, so I sent [the director] Mimi Cave this video of me in the kitchen—I took this huge steak knife and just started dancing to ‘80s music. So she saw that, and I guess that did it. Daisy Edgar-Jones had signed on to the project, and I knew, having seen her work, that she would be somebody that would anchor this thing and lead it in the right direction. I had never met Lily James before Pam and Tommy, not until Craig had Lily and me over to his house and he was like, “What’s up guys? Should we rehearse?”
MR: Fresh is so good. I’m actually a little bit glad that we’re doing this over Zoom because I’d be genuinely terrified to be in a room with you right now. I completely lost my head watching it, to be honest; it’s so brilliant and so fucked up.
SS: We were really lucky because everyone was very open to what Daisy and I wanted to do; we didn’t want to fall into anything gimmicky. It starts out like a romantic comedy, and you’re supposed to see that there’s a potential between the main characters, but the truth is this guy is sort of obsessed with her. That scene to me, where Daisy’s character wakes up strapped to his bed and is realizing what’s going on, everything shifts. You see her go from, Wait a minute, is this really happening? To, Oh, my God, it is happening. She grounds the movie from then on. We’ve been raised with this narrative that you’re going to meet someone who will instantly open up and understand you, and then you’ll be together for the rest of your lives. The movie’s a little bit of a commentary on that—how you fall for somebody because you’re starved for real connection, but is that person really who they say they are? Maybe we need to step back for a second and go, okay, I feel an intense thing here but let me just suss it out before—
Continue reading
Sebastian was interviewed by Joshua Horowitz for ‘Happy, Sad, Confused’ to talk about the MCU along with ‘Fresh’, check out the clip below. You can check out the interview wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts (Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio etc) or you can subscribe on Patreon to view the video version. I’ve added screencaps of the interview to the gallery.
Sebastian attended a variety of events for the 2022 British Academy Film Awards in London this past weekend. You can find high quality photos in the gallery now.
EW.com — For Pam & Tommy, reality proved to be stranger than fiction. All throughout the eight episodes of Hulu’s limited series, the show told the unbelievable true story of how Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s private sex tape was stolen from a safe in their house and sold online without their consent. And the eighth and final episode (now streaming on Hulu) detailed how the aftermath of the tape’s release contributed to the end of Anderson (played by Lily James) and Lee’s (played by Sebastian Stan) marriage — but many of the messier, controversial details of that particular story weren’t actually shown onscreen.
While the finale featured a devastating scene in which Lee blows up at Anderson, screaming in her face, throwing the coffee table, and violently breaking things in their home, it’s not until the end of the episode that a chyron reveals how bad things actually got between them in real life. The credits reveal that Anderson filed for divorce from Lee two months after his arrest from a physical fight in the couple’s kitchen in which he pleaded no contest to felony spousal battery and was sentenced to six months in jail.
Stan is glad that the producers decided to keep that moment out of the final script because he thinks it’s not essential to the specific story being told in the series. “The idea is so much bigger — it focuses on them but obviously there’s much bigger implications here that we need to be thinking about that I’m not even sure we’re processing yet,” Stan tells EW. “And everything else that we’re dealing with happened at the earlier portion of their relationship and all these other things came much later. The two of them were together, on and off, for at least seven years, if I’m not mistaken, and that’s a whole other chapter that we don’t see with how it pertains to the timing of this American crime.”
Beca
use the show is about the release of the tape and the impact it had on their relationship in addition to pop culture, Stan says it was the right call to keep the finale focused on that. “It’s about what did it say about America and about the internet and the media and how we are very much driven in many ways for profit and consumerism — we don’t stop at the repercussions of how it might impact anybody on a human level, because they’re celebrities, maybe you can get away with it. But no,” Stan adds. “Because now, by the way, it’s not just celebrities. It is social media, Instagram and Facebook and these companies that don’t take any credit for any of the damage that they’re inflicting on on teenagers. I mean, teens are being bullied right now on the internet, in the same way. Everyone could be the victim of invasion of privacy.”
That idea of exploring a complicated issue that affected not just one couple but also all of society as a whole and could teach people an important lesson is what excited Stan about taking on this role, despite his earlier doubts and hesitations about the project. Continue reading
EW.com — With all the talk surrounding Lily James’ uncanny resemblance to Pamela Anderson on Pam & Tommy — and the daily four-hour process it took for the English actress to become the blond bombshell — not enough attention has been paid to Sebastian Stan’s own intense physical transformation to play her then-husband Tommy Lee. But ever since Stan debuted on Hulu’s limited series in the premiere in nothing but a tiny thong, tatted and pierced up like the infamous Mötley Crüe drummer, it’s been clear that he’s got his own story to tell about what it took to become one-half of the ’90s tabloid royal couple.
The actor has spent years bulking up to play comic book antihero Bucky Barnes a.k.a. The Winter Soldier in many big Marvel Universe movies, but he says that losing the drastic amount of weight to play the skinny, lanky Lee was actually the most difficult physical process he’s ever experienced in his career. “I was trying to lose weight and I still felt I didn’t lose enough weight,” Stan tells EW ahead of the series finale. “And people were telling me I was crazy and going, ‘You have body dysmorphia now’ — which I always did anyway.”
Stan spent months where he stopped working out entirely to lose as much weight as possible, and then he went even further than that. “I was just running and trying to get 20,000 steps a day, and then I was fasting for 16 to 18 hours a day,” he says. “And that definitely does something, especially if you’re [driving] in traffic. But I’m proud of the whole thing.” Despite the brutal process of fasting and changing up his exercise routine to lose weight rather than build muscle, he wasn’t too worried about the negative effects on his body.
“Anybody that even has a healthy physique to some extent has body dysmorphia,” he says. “Because once you’re going into a peak, the best look possible, which by the way, I don’t care what they say, unless there’s like, magic formulas out there — which there are but some of us are not in that pocket — your body can only be at peak 100 percent for like maybe a week or something. At least, how I’ve experienced it; and I mean diet and exercise and tanning and water and lighting and everything. And then you spend the rest of the time going, ‘I’m not what I used to be.’ But it’s just all in the head.”
It took a long time for Stan to feel comfortable taking on the role of Lee, purely because of the physical aspect. “When [director] Craig Gillespie called me and said he wanted me to play this part, I thought it was a joke,” he says with a big laugh. “I don’t think I felt good about it … I don’t think I felt like I could do this until the camera test, the first time we applied the tattoos and the piercings and the costume and the hair was dyed and the whole thing.”
When Stan saw himself as Lee, alongside James as Anderson, that’s when he finally felt like he maybe could do this part justice. But that didn’t mean he stopped doubting himself throughout all of filming. “It was always difficult because I just wasn’t the same frame as him,” he says. “I had to lose so much weight, and the drums were a real pressure for me; I’d never played any instrument before and I had to learn. The whole thing felt like this just ginormous mountain to climb and there was always a little bit of an unsettling feeling about it. But I thrive well in discomfort, especially at work. It pushes you and as long as you can manage and handle it well, you can grow from it.”
By the end of production, Stan started noticing how his new/temporary rockstar look was impacting his daily life — and he definitely didn’t hate it. “People serve you coffee differently when you have tattoos, I’ve got to tell you,” he says with another laugh. “I’ve always debated a tattoo and I’ve never done it. I never got one so the little boy in me, with the tattoos, was definitely having a field day, enjoying it.”
That’s why, despite his initial hesitation and lingering feelings of discomfort, he doesn’t regret taking on a role that required him to change so much about himself. “The physical transformation is a very important part to the acting process, and whether it’s him or a fictional character, I look for those things because I get tired of myself,” Stan admits. “I do! I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. I know my Sebastian-isms and the things that I do so I like to be challenged. And the physical aspect of it, whether it’s losing weight or gaining weight or changing hair color, it shifts perspective.”
He just wishes he had more time to prepare, lose more weight, and learn how to inhabit the character even more than how it turned out on the series. “The biggest obstacle that we had, honestly, was that we shot this so quickly,” he says. “The turnaround times were brutal and when you have to consistently maintain a certain kind of energy … in a perfect world, we would have had more time.”
All eight episodes of Pam & Tommy are now streaming on Hulu.
