Pam & Tommy: Who Plays Jay Leno & Was The Interview Real?
Hulu’s Pam & Tommy episode 1 starts with a rehash of an uncomfortable 1996 The Tonight Show with Jay Leno interview for Lily James’s Pamela Anderson, and some might wonder if the interview really happened, as well as who plays Jay Leno. The interview should have been about Anderson’s upcoming film Barb Wire, but instead, cringeworthily focuses on her and husband Tommy Lee’s stolen sex tape, with Anderson being visibly uncomfortable. The scene serves as a way to foreshadow the point of view Pam & Tommy will have, focused more on the emotional toll on the victims, especially Pamela Anderson, and the cruel way it was talked about in the media.
Pam & Tommy is based on the Rolling Stone article “Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape,” published in 2014. On top of the story detailing the theft and the subsequent spread of the sex tape via bootleg VHS sales, the Hulu drama also purports to tell the whirlwind love story between Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan), kickstarted by a first meeting that rapidly turned into marriage in just 96 hours. The first three episodes of Pam & Tommy were released on February 2, made available to stream simultaneously on Hulu in the US and internationally on either Disney+ or Star+.
Pam & Tommy episode 1’s opening scene shows an initially playful banter between James’s Pamela Anderson and The Tonight Show host. It quickly turns into something unsavory and uncomfortable when he asks her about the tape, especially with the camera lingering on Anderson’s visible distress. Relentlessly making jokes that were allowed (yet were no less hurtful) in the 1990s but sound completely out-of-bounds in 2022, Jay Leno is aptly portrayed by comedian Adam Ray in the brief opening scene. Ray, who appeared in different TV shows and also voiced She-Ra & the Princesses of Power’s Swift Wind, not only visually resembles the late-night show host through the use of prosthetics but also mimics frightfully well Leno’s approach to debating the sex tape scandal in 1996.
The exact interview shown in Pam & Tommy never happened in real life; instead, it was a combination of a few interviews. The dress, hair, and make-up that James’s Anderson flaunts in Pam & Tommy episode 1 point to a specific interview Pamela Anderson did with Jay Leno in 1996 (via YouTube) when she was expecting her first child with Tommy Lee. However, the opening scene’s atmosphere is more accurately reflected in another real-life appearance of Anderson on The Tonight Show. In it, Anderson aired her grievances at Leno, who tried to defend himself by saying that he might have made one joke about the scandal but failed miserably as Anderson provided a tape with proof of at least 12 jokes Leno had made about them in his monologues (via YouTube). The interview reflected Pam & Tommy episode 1’s opening scene’s tone, especially when Anderson commented on the jokes, heartbreakingly saying, “This is devastating to us.”
Pam & Tommy’s opening scene impactfully set the tone and intent for the rest of the series, which tells the audience what to expect in the aftermath of the tape being made public. Adam Ray is set to appear again in episodes 5 and 7, so it’s safe to say that more will be seen from the Jay Leno interview briefly shown at the beginning. When that happens, Pam & Tommy will hopefully be able to make even more clearly the point it implied at the beginning, which is how unfair and unbalanced the media response was at the time, especially in regard to Anderson.
Pam & Tommy releases new episodes every Wednesday on Hulu.