It's strange that NBC, where This Is Us' Chrissy Metz is a star, would put Renée Zellweger in a fat suit for The Thing About Pam

Indiewire

"Hollywood has produced another 'unrecognizable' transformation via fat suit," says Libby Hill. "In a recent Vanity Fair interview accompanied by promotional photos, Renée Zellweger spoke about the makeup and prosthetics used to transform the Oscar-winning actress into her Pam Hupp, the average American mom who became a murderer in the upcoming NBC limited series The Thing About Pam. Being an average American woman means that Hupp is not the size of an average Hollywood actor. But instead of casting a performer that might accurately embody the role, we have Zellweger in a fat suit and calling it character building. The industry seems to be doubling down on pretending fat women don’t exist....The fact that the casting choice comes from a project on NBC is even stranger, given that it’s home to This Is Us. The series features Chrissy Metz as Kate Pearson, a bigger woman who deals openly with issues surrounding her weight and size-discrimination, one of the few examples of an overweight woman on a broadcast network. Metz herself is a tireless advocate for body positivity." As Hill notes, Zellweger's portrayal comes less than a year after Sarah Paulson was criticized for wearing a fat suit to play Linda Tripp in Impeachment: American Crime Story.