Renee Zellweger to make her network TV debut for NBC

There’s nothing like a good Dateline mystery, and over the years the ongoing saga of Pam Hupp has captured audience imaginations like no other. Renee Zellweger is set to star as Hupp in a limited series for NBC, The Thing About Pam, that will be based on stories that were featured on Dateline about Hupp and the twists and turns of her legal battles.

Zellweger will also serve as executive producer on the project along with writer and showrunner Jessika Borsiczky. Blumhouse TV, NBC News Studios and Zellweger’s own production company Big Picture Co. are all working together to bring the show to life.

For Jason Blum, CEO at Blumhouse, the project is a perfect fit:

"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. This opportunity to build a powerful, scripted franchise and work with the incomparable Renee 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."

Renee Zellweger will bring Pam Hupp to life in The Thing About Pam

There’s no question that people love a good murder mystery. That’s why shows like Unsolved Mysteries have so much staying power. Pam Hupp was featured on Dateline several times because her case was so extreme and so bizarre, and there are still details missing that keep people wondering what really happened.

The story begins with the murder of Betsy Faria in 2011. Her death was quickly blamed on her husband Russ, who steadfastly maintained his innocence. His conviction came through testimony from Hupp, but he was eventually cleared of all wrongdoing because the evidence never stacked up.

Hupp was convicted of murdering Louis Gumpenberger in 2016, and the police believe that she committed the crime to further implicate Russ Faria. She’s also been named as a suspect for her own mother’s death in 2013, which had been ruled an accident but is still under investigation.

There are so many twists and turns to the Hupp story that it has become the subject of true crime podcasts and Dateline segments over the years, so it’s very fitting to have the story become a limited series. Zellweger, who is known for her roles in the Bridget Jones movies and in Jerry Maguire, has a bit of experience playing a murderer when she brought Roxy Hart to life in the film version of Chicago.