POSING in Pammy’s red Baywatch swimsuit, bleach blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, Lily James is a double for the Playboy siren.
Yet her transformation from prim and proper Downton Abbey star to the 32DD legend did not come easy.
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The 32-year-old British actress needed a prosthetic body suit to get Pam’s surgically enhanced figure in order to play her in the television drama Pam & Tommy.
She also had to spend four hours each day in hair and make-up when making the eight-part series, which begins on Disney Plus on February 2.
Often beginning at 3.30am a team of specialists would apply the fake tan, the wig and the chest plate.
There was something liberating in it
Lily James
Lily told the latest issue of Porter magazine: “I’ve never done anything where I look very different from myself before.
“I’d like to continue in this vein, there was something liberating in it. There was a bravery that came from that, a courage that came from … disappearing.”
The clean-cut star of 2015 movie Cinderella admits she “had no idea” if she could be convincing in Pam’s swimsuit, and has “never worked so hard” for a role.
But after immersing herself in Pam’s books, poetry and interviews, she felt empowered stepping out as the glamour girl.
So much so that she dreaded finally having to wrap up filming. She said: “I hated it. It was like being stripped of all these superpowers. I’d really enjoyed the physicality and sensuality, even down to the long fingernails.
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“There was just so much character to hold on to. It was really thrilling. We were exploring Pamela and Tommy’s life – this lust for love, this open-hearted falling into something.
“It was exciting, thinking about what it meant to be a young woman at the height of her fame.”
The way that Lily morphed into Pammy has stunned everyone who has seen the photos.
Fellow actress Karen Gillan commented “Woah!! This is such a transformation! Amazing!”.
While a Twitter user said: “Give the makeup artist who turned Lily James into Pamela Anderson an Emmy already.”
Viewers will have to wait until the series begins to see whether Lily can embody Pam’s personality as well as her looks.
Pam has told friends she won’t watch Lily’s performance and cannot understand why the story of the sex tape she made with her first husband Tommy Lee is being “dredged up.”
But Lily felt it was “essential” to make the drama in order to reveal the hatred Pam faced back in the 1990s.
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Lily James transforms into Pamela Anderson in trailer for Pam and Tommy
