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.”

Because 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