Two-time Oscar winner Renée Zellweger is returning to television.
After starring in the 2019 Netflix series What/If, the Judy, Cold Mountain, and Chicago star is now set to headline a The Thing About Pam TV show, a true-crime limited series from Blumhouse that will air on NBC. The series will be based on the 2011 murder of Betsy Faria, a case that was became widely known after it was covered on Dateline NBC and subsequently was told in the form of a mega-hit podcast.
Deadline reports that Zellweger will star in and executive produce The Thing About Pam, which already has a six-episode straight-to-series order from NBC. Jessika Borsiczky (House of Lies) wrote the script and will serve as the showrunner.
The series “is based on the murder of Betsy Faria, which resulted in her husband Russ’ conviction. He always insisted that he did not kill her, and his conviction was later overturned as the brutal crime set off a chain of events that would expose a diabolical scheme deeply involving Pam Hupp, a role that will be played by Zellweger.” Susan Rovner, the Chairman of Entertainment Content for NBCUniversal’s TV branch, says the story “will bring a completely new perspective to a story that has already captivated millions,” while Borsiczky says that it has “all the twists and turns of a thrilling whodunit murder mystery” but is “really a character story at its heart that reflects in a profound way the American landscape back to us.”
I have not listened to the podcast or seen the multi-episode Dateline run that covered this case, but I’m always down for watching a diabolical scheme on the small screen, and I’m sure Zellweger is a big enough name to attract a bunch of eyeballs – especially for the demographic that still actively watches broadcast television.
“Similar to our acclaimed and award-winning crime series such as The Jinx and Sharp Objects, we see this opportunity to fuel viewers’ appetites for strong and compelling stories,” said Jason Blum, Blumhouse’s CEO and founder and a producer of this show. “This opportunity to build a powerful, scripted franchise and work with the incomparable Renée Zellweger in her first starring role on broadcast TV, with a writer as gifted as Jessika Borsiczky and adapting material from the treasure troves of Dateline in partnership with our friends at NBC, is unparalleled. I couldn’t be more proud of the Blumhouse team for bringing it to fruition.”
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