Zellweger shares his preparation for “The Thing About Pam”

NEW YORK (AP) — In her new NBC limited series, “The Thing About Pam,” Renee Zellweger uses prosthetics and fillers to play a greater weight in the role of a convicted murderer. A decision that critics have questioned, arguing that a larger actress could have played the role.

Zellweger famously increased his weight for “Bridget Jones's Diary” in 2001 and “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” in 2004. The character reached his goal weight (or Zellweger's natural size) for “Bridget Jones's Baby” in 2016.

The two-Oscar winner chose prosthetics instead of gaining weight because her character is a real person whose appearance, Zellweger believes, influenced her not being considered suspicious at first.

“We're talking about a person who looks like someone on whom we easily project our own beliefs about who she is: 'She's clearly kind, and clearly sweet and funny and funny, warm and considerate and a great friend because she's always there and she's always so generous. ' And we easily dismiss anything that can be thought of in other circumstances.”

Zellweger said that to match Hupp's appearance he didn't want to leave anything to chance.

“I know the results of a 'Bridget Jones' experience and this is not a fictional character who is at the mercy of my performance and to see what happens.”

The process with prosthetics was also not easy, because Zellweger said she is allergic to adhesive. “There are many chemicals involved in the application and removal of these prosthetics. You're sorry.”

Zellweger plays Pam Hupp, the best friend of Betsy Faria, a Missouri woman who was stabbed to death in her home in 2011. The police arrested Faria's husband for the crime and he was found guilty after Hupp testified against him in court. The husband spent three years in prison and was exonerated in a second trial. Meanwhile, investigators began to suspect Hupp who was the last person to see Faria alive. Hupp had convinced Faria to place her as a beneficiary of life insurance just days before she was killed.

To mislead the police, Hupp posed as producer of the NBC crime series “Dateline” and paid a disabled man, Louis Gumpenberger, to come to her home to make a false call to the 911 emergency number. Hupp shot and killed Gumpenberger and told police he was an intruder. He tried to pretend that Gumpenberger was working with Faria's husband to steal her insurance money.

Hupp is now serving a prison sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder of Gumpenberger. She was charged in 2021 for Faria's murder and is being investigated for the murder of her own mother.

“Dateline” first produced an episode about the case, headed by Keith Morrison, and then turned it into a podcast. That's how Zellweger first heard the story. Zellweger said that a partner sent him the podcast and he listened to it endlessly from start to finish while he was driving with his dog Chester.

“I talked (to the podcast) as if I were watching TV and shouting with the news. I was talking to the radio and Chester raised his head as if he said 'Huh? ' , because I said 'No, no, no'”, he recalled. “It was crazy and in the end you realize that you have asked yourself 'why' and 'how' a hundred times. I was very curious to explore the story further. It just seemed like a very interesting project to get into.”