Ben Chase, actor and star of NBC's 'The Thing About Pam' joins Cheddar News to talk about the new show and its growing popularity. 

Between Bells

Actor Ben Chase Talks NBC's 'The Thing About Pam'

Welcome max between Bells. We all love a good murder mystery and NBC's limited series. The thing about pam is just that the sixth episode show stars Renee Zellweger and follows the 2019 Dateline podcast of the same name. It's based on the 2011 murder of Betsy Faria that resulted in her husband Russell's conviction. Although he insisted he did not kill her. The brutal crime set off a chain of events that would expose a diabolical scheme deeply involving pam, hupp. Let's take a look. Tell me about pam. She's nice lady. She lied about where she was at the time of the crime, look at the life insurance, etc. Changed the beneficiary from rusty pam. We've got pam's motive to kill transfer the balance to my personal checking. Joining us now is Ben Chase actor and one of the stars in NBC's. The thing about Pam, welcome to the show. The show has been received so well by viewers, according to variety. Premiere ratings jumped nearly 400% with a week of delayed viewing. What does it mean to you then as part of the show, because the show is getting such a positive response. Well, I think the first thing it means is that millennials will not be told going to watch tv. So the fact that they all watched come in four times increase over the last seven days I think means that people are talking to each other and saying, hey, I'm watching this great thing. It's on network television. It's something I haven't seen before in a while, check it out. And for me it's been a blast because it might sound obvious, but it's a lot more fun when everybody watches them. Oh, I have no doubt is, and I think to your point, the fact that it's on network makes it so different that people are actually watching. You play Nate Swanson, he's a second chair attorney. Tell me more about your character, Ben, I play a real character named Nate Swanson, I don't think I'm giving anything away about the plot that it took over three years for this whole story to play out, and so Nate shows up, he's just like me, he's excited, he wants to be there, he wants to help, he wants to be thought of as useful, and by the time we get to the end of the story, he's become a pretty successful lawyer in his own right, and I think has gone on to have a really good law career in the ST louis area, and I love playing him. I felt an immediate connection to him. When I read the script. Our showrunner, jenni klein has this just tremendous way of writing language that I thought fit perfectly for me, and it was a blast. Renee Zellweger really transformed herself in this role, it's incredible to watch this scheme, was actually featured on Dateline for several, for several, several episodes. Did you know much about the story before you actually got involved with the project. Oh no, I have no idea what is the thing about pam. Um So uh you know there are people in my household. My wife had liked watching Datelines and that was probably our first couple fight was like oh my God can we turn off murder investigations for a second? But it was so popular and once I started to learn more and more about the story, it's like this incredible escalating case of absurdities. You know where she did this and then she did that and the lawyers did this and then they did that and it just was so engrossing. I knew I wanted to be a part of it. What why do you think our society is so obsessed with these true crime stories? Because we are we love watching them. Mm hmm, mm hmm. Mm hmm. And I started to get into them. Now. I know I said that I was originally the person who said let's not do it. I think there's two things I think the first thing is that we're intrigued and interested in the evil that we don't experience in our day to day lives thankfully right? I mean pam hupp did something really evil. You know she killed her best friend for $150,000. It's really nefarious. And so when you get to watch an amazing artist like Renee Zellweger take on that kind of turmoil. It's interesting to watch. And then I think the other thing is that we are fascinated by the fact that if the cops and the prosecutor decide that you're guilty, it's pretty hard to get out of that Russ. Had two very good lawyers played by myself and josh them all and he still spent three years in jail, wow. You know, we've had actors on who have said they feel the added pressure when they're playing real people. Did you feel that pressure here? Ben um Nate Swanson sent me a DM on my social media and he was like, the only thing he said was he's like, please man, make me look cool. Uh no, I think there's a really good script, right? So I'm playing Nate, but I'm playing the character in the script and that's what my job is. So it turned out that because we have a great writer that when I play what's in there that I'm doing him a solid because what he and Joel Schwartz did is admirable and it's something that I then admire. So I'm going to try and bring the best parts of myself to tell that story. It's important. You also start in Law and Order organized crime. That show is such a huge cult following. What's it like being on that show. So the thing that's really funny about the people from law and Order. It's wonderful is that it's not like, oh hey, you know, are you? So it's they, they know you, they know you're there buddy, right? So my brother and I were walking back from getting a pint and this guy comes up to us on the street and he starts talking to me about the script and he's like, oh well, you know, what do you think Dick Wolf is going to do with this, that the other thing? And I'm like, I don't know, I'm talking to him and we walk away. My brother goes, did you go to drama school with that guy? And I don't know, I've never seen him before. Well Ben, I can't wait to check this show out, thank you so much for being on Ben Chase actor and one of the stars. Of course of NBC's, the thing about pam, You can catch new episodes of the six episode series every Tuesday on NBC and of course it's streaming on Peacock as well.