Becoming Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson nearly took over Lily Jame s’s life.
The actress, 33, stayed in character so much while filming the series Pam & Tommy that she talked to her mum in Pammie’s voice.
Her performance won her an Emmy nomination but playing the American pin-up accurately nearly drove Lily to a breakdown. The former Downton Abbey star used method acting techniques to stay in character 24/7.
She said: “It was such a screwed-up process. You just have to be patient with yourself. The hours are so long and you feel really burnt out. Your nervous system is just like, shot to sh**. I felt like a real wreck at the end of it.”
The series, based on the 2014 Rolling Stone article Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape, tells the story of her tempestuous marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.
Lily said she constantly wore her blonde wig and even pretended to be the 90’s icon when with her own mum. She said: “I’d go around in a blonde wig because I just felt that I needed to hold on to her a little bit.
“The difference from me to her was too extreme to go back and forth. So, I had to stay in this middle no man’s land of like Lily/Pamela most of the time. I would totally slip into her voice.
“Even when I went out for dinner and was ordering with the waitress or talking to my mom on the phone, I would be American. I think I’ve lost lots of jobs because I keep speaking like Pamela in any audition.”
Like Pammie, Lily has also had to deal with her love life being exposed due to an alleged affair with married co-star Dominic West, 52, while filming The Pursuit Of Love in 2021.
Lily said that she has resorted to her own troubled times in the public eye to sympathise with how Pamela felt.
