'Pam & Tommy' recaps sex tape drama through a MeToo lens

'Pam & Tommy' recreates the whirlwind courtship of a rock musician and TV star and their impulsive marriage in a series about how this couple had their privacy invaded, leading to major stress in their lives and on their marriage.

"What's it like?" responds Lily James as Anderson. "It's horrible ... It's devastating."

Jokes about the sex tape were regular monologue fodder for Leno at the time. What perhaps was amusing in 1996 is disturbing in 2022.

James says this fresh perspective is a point of the series, based on a Rolling Stone article written by Amanda Chicago Lewis in 2014.

"We're looking back at these stories as kind of reckonings and realizing our own culpability in the way people have been treated and how as a society we treat women, particularly, not only through the media, but in all different levels," said James. "It's good to provoke a conversation, and it's important for us all to sort of look inward and look at ourselves and try and do better."