00:00:06
Speaker 1: Amy Roboc and TJ. Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host Alisa Donovan. Hey everyone, Elisa Donovan here and this is Killer Thriller. What if you came home one night to find your spouse brutally murdered and within days you were the one being accused of the crime. Well, that's exactly what happened to Russ Farrea, a man who was wrongfully convicted, spent years in prison, and was later exonerated for killing his wife. It all unfolds in The Thing About Pam, a series starring Renee Zellweger based on the real life case, and it is full of outrageous twists, shocking events, and ever shifting narratives, and the real life case is still playing out in the courts. Today we are joined by Glenn Fleschler, who plays the role of rus Firea. Glenn, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited to talk to you about this show. So first, I loved this series so very much, and you're so wonderful in it, as is everyone. And you know, it's such a unique kind of tone that sort of leans into the I think bizarre and you know nature of the whole crime. But before you were cast, did you know anything about it? Did you had you heard about Pam Hup or the case?
00:01:33
Speaker 2: No, I knew not a thing about it.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: Wow, So you just read the script and went, wow, this isn't is this real?
00:01:41
Speaker 2: I don't remember what I read right away. I do remember that I got an audition, and you know how sometimes you know, you want to put your best foot forward, and sometimes you just don't have time.
00:01:57
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:01:57
Speaker 2: This was one of those times where I think I was doing like multiple jobs, and uh, this audition came in and I said, well, this is kind of interesting, but I don't really have time to do it. Like I almost didn't do it. And then I was like, I think I'm going to have to just like do one take and just get it done. I don't know if I had your phones in my ear. There was something weird that I did with the phone call. It was Russ's nine to one one phone call and it was a lot of historyonics.
00:02:28
Speaker 1: And oh my gosh.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember thinking this is terrible. This is terrible, you know what I mean, Like I almost send it right like this is all I had time to do. You know, sometimes you got to let yourself look and be like, well, this is this is.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: What I gues, this is what I got.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: In the running. But I ended up getting the job. And in fact, over the months that we were working on this, from time to time that producers would talk about my audition, they'd be like, it was such a great audition and I would cringe because I just, my god, so terrible. And I knew that I could do a better job once I, you know, really prepare for the role. But right I never, I just was it was just a good faith that I got that.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so funny. There's something like that's you know, great about that for us to remember sometimes we're meant for certain parts and that's just the way it is. And sort of you're you're a built irnate ability and your first instinct is the right one and it's great, you know, So it's a good lesson for your lesson.
00:03:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also like, you can't get cast if you don't put yourself in the running. So sometimes I think like I have to be right. I'm sorry, I got to get it perfect, and sometimes you're just you know, what they're looking for.
00:03:43
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I firmly believe that. So okay, So just for the people that are maybe unfamiliar with the details of the case, we'll just like do a quick run through of what they are. In December of twenty eleven, this woman, Pam Hup, she is a house flipper, married woman in Missouri. She becomes a sole beneficiary of her friend Betsy Furrea's life insurance policy. Five days later, Betsy is murdered in her home and stabbed multiple times. They arrest the husband your character, mainly based on kind of the things that Pam tells them about him, about their relationship, et cetera. So he serves three years in prison, then he is exonerated. Then Pam Hup kills this other man, Lewis Gumpenberger, in her home, claiming self defense. She's charged with first degree murder, and it just goes on and on and on, like the insanity of this person is right, and then probably her mother, like she's really relentless in her kind of pursuit of But we've just got like we talk a lot about a lot of narcissists on this show, because oftentimes the these sorts of killers are incredibly narcissistic, and you know, she acts as though it's not her fault that she I mean, she quite literally makes up lies, but then you know, always sort of claiming that she's injured and that it's someone else's problem. And I mean, when you realize that this was a real story, what was your like? Did you could you believe it? What did you think?
00:05:25
Speaker 2: I mean, there was so much to it, and Pam Hupp herself was such an extreme character, and also so was Russell. And what I was attracted to was the fact that normally I am the guy who commits the.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Murderer, right, That's what I was thinking, Yeah.
00:05:44
Speaker 2: Murderers, and so I was like, in this case, I didn't do it, So that was attractive, right. But the main part, the main gist of the experience for me, was talking to our showrunner Jenny Klein. I had the good sense to call her and just say, like, I haven't really talked to anyone about this show. I'm supposed to go to New Orleans and shoot it. We had gotten postponed because of a hurricane that happened. Oh, things got delayed a month, and I just sort of felt like I haven't really I've been doing my own you know, watching the dateline stuff, whatever research I could get my hands on at the time, but I thought I should talk to somebody, and luckily I called Jenny and we had this great conversation and she said, you know, I think you should meet Russell Faria, who was the character.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: Yes, so did you tell me so?
00:06:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she put us in touch and we ended up having hours and hours of phone conversations over several days. He was actually on a road trip. It was like driving across country, and so we would have to time it out so that he could be somewhere where he would have you know, Wi Fi or something. So we did it in these kind of increments, and then we'd have these like really long talks for hours and I was just scribbling away, and you know, I'm not an interviewer, but I was like, I got to really get focused because I want to get all the good stuff. Luckily, he made it so easy because he was so forthcoming with all them. You know, I had to there was no way around it. I had to go into like the worst details of his life, right death of his wife and the subsequent horror that he went through, and there was no way to not ask him about those things. But He really made it so easy and was so forthcoming, and my big not reservation, but my like the challenge of playing the role was you know, you look at this from the outset, from the outside, and you think, how can this guy have gone this long? For instance, he didn't ask for a lawyer. Yes, he gurrogated him for twenty four hours straight.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: Right, That's what I was wondering too.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: And he didn't, you know, he didn't really protest that strongly. He just kind of let it happen to him. And so that, you know, it comes off being like, you know, how could somebody be this kind of naive or and when I talked to him, I just you know, it really was a matter of he had such faith, he had such faith in the legal system and that it was going to come out, and so he just let them bamboozle him basically, right. But then it was that same faith that got him through several years in prison, being wrongly in prison before he got that appeal and was able to get his name clear. So that was all really fascinating and useful.
00:08:33
Speaker 1: Did he say anything about because I remember thinking he you know, if he was he had been out with friends at the friend's house playing games and you know, like a sort of normal gathering that he had with his friends, and you know, drinking a little or getting a little high, and then that kind of like that sort of shock has got to have some impact. And then not sleeping and staying up, and I mean did he talk at all about like I think about, you know, if I have a little too much wine at a friend's house and come home and come to something like that, like it must be like you can't even believe your eyes. I mean, I mean that was.
00:09:12
Speaker 2: Part of the factoring in of playing it all because if you listen to the real nine to one one call, it does seem you know, it's what Pam hump and what the prosecuting attorneys played off of that. It seemed like a performance because it was so hysterical. The nine to one one operator thought it was a woman at first, and that was what I had to do in the audition. So you want it to be true to life, but also as extreme as it is. I mean, if you played it really the way that when you listen to it, if you played it straight like, no one would believe it, right. But of course it's hard for any of us to put ourselves in such a horrifying situation, and he came home to such a grizzly, extreme scene. So it was just like that was where we were starting from. That's basically the start of the show and the kind of right upsetting incident.
00:10:05
Speaker 1: Did he say why? I was also struck why he said on the call, And maybe it was just because you know, he was befuddled, and I don't know what anyone would say, but he says that she, his wife, killed herself. And it seems like did he say why? That was the instinct that he instead of saying someone killed her.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: She had had a cancer diagnosis, she had struggled with depression. I don't. I don't remember now, but I think there were possibly earlier attempts, so that's where his mind went. There were slashes across her arms, right wrists, but I mean that was also part of the confounding nature of the interrogation, was that she had been stabbed so many times and it was so much blood. And what it turned out was that I think that a lot of the wounds were post mortem, so very staged, right, right. I didn't No, I don't think he could process what he was.
00:11:14
Speaker 1: Right, right. It really is so fascinating to me because it reveals how innocent people like that. To me just strikes at all of the actual facts strike me as an innocent person, like that's how they would respond, but how those things can be twisted into making it seem like he's guilty. It's just like it's crazy to me.
00:11:50
Speaker 2: It was a sort of a perfect storm with this, you know, testimony from Pam who was manipulating things behind the scenes, but also a process computer who wanted things to go a certain way, and her relationship with a judge who right relationship. There were a lot of things that shouldn't have gone on that went on, and you know, by detector tests and trying to coerce a confession. Well it's the case, you know, we portray it in the show like, oh the husband did it, like that's what the cops are saying, because that's what usually happens. And so it just fell into that narrative, and unfortunately Russ was so trusting that he didn't fight it in such a way that maybe some things would.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Have come to light sooner sooner, a.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: Terrific alibi, and they kind of.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: Just blew past that, right, that was very striking to me that it's there were four or five people that said, no, he was.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: With us same night, and then he went to an RB's and there was a receipt timestamped that he had been at this Arby's. We depicted it in the show of me, yeah, I ordering uh these sandwiches. Hey. In fact, we have a group text the actors in our show called Arby's and Game Night because with Arby's and Game Night as like that, right defense, and.
00:13:19
Speaker 3: So so they they also portray or at least Pam talks about him Russ as being having a temper and that he's you know, a little dark and brooding, and he doesn't it was that?
00:13:34
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that accurate? Did he say that was true? And then even the kids a little bit saying, well, the kids don't deny it.
00:13:41
Speaker 3: I guess it's sort of a gray area.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Led by the nose to make that testimony, you have to ask them. I don't remember if Russ copped to any sort of dark behavior. I mean, I know that he and Betsy had, you know, had an on again, off again situation. They had gone through troubles in their marriage, and Pam definitely tried to play off of that, but apparently, according to the people who knew them, they were in a good place when these events happened, and Russ was very close with his stepdaughters that he raised from the age of roughly five. I think this one maybe, and and that was just a terrible rupture in their family, and they were pushed to testify against him, as was Betsy's mother loved Russ, and between Pam and the authorities and the prosecutors, they kind of convinced her that he was guilty. And she sends a message at some point through his attorney that she's so sorry.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in their kid you know, there their kids and they're young, and it's it's all really tragic. I've read also that that he doesn't speak to that he still hasn't spoken to the.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: Children as of the conclusion of our show, and I guess around when the show aired, which was my last contact with people from the story, they had not reconciled. He hadn't spoken to them, and I did ask him about that, and that was probably the place where he was the most clammed up. But yeah, I felt that he could not ridge that gap at that point. I think right felt like such an extreme betrayal, but I believe it was very painful for all involved. And our showrunner Jenny certainly leaned into that part of the story.
00:15:49
Speaker 4: She really wanted getting an Adlon who played daughter and I to have, you know, for that to be a significant part of the story their rupture right right.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: And there is a beautiful part in the in the end with Russ and his current wife. I think they're married, yes, Carol, that so, and is that part as.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: Of the time of the show. I don't know what happened after that. Yeah, A very coincidental thing that she she became a witness in the Gumpenberger murder because Pam showed up at her house trying to lure her and did lure her into her car need to be someone from dateline and offering her money to go ride with her, and as though she was going to pay her tax free or some voiceover work or something to do with dateline.
00:16:44
Speaker 1: Using date Line which comes from so diabolical.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: This woman eventually smelled a rat and saved her life by getting out of this car before the Gumpenberger incident. And then she somehow got introduced to Russ through one of his game like friends, knew her was a neighbor or something, and then they ended up becoming engaged of dating for years after that.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yes, they're saying that they are still together and they were just outside of the courthouse. I guess where Pam is being. They have a new the new trial, the trial for the murder of Betsy. It's very hard to keep track of this woman's crimes. But this is, uh, they were spotted together. It was this beautiful scene of you know, it's this is this is the thing that's always like, uh, there's always something or I should say, I always look for something that's beautiful and hopeful in the kind of the humanity part of all of these stories. And that just seems like a nice one that those two, you know, found each other. So this the let's talk a little bit about the So this the life insurance part of the whole thing. So she so not just that Pam. So she became the beneficiary of Betsy's life insurance. And then but the explanation around all of that kept changing, and I just and that the kids she was supposed to set up a an account for the children, which they never received the money, and the fact that all of these things did not become true evidence in the first case is like, I can't understand any of that. It just makes no sense.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: Right. So they had a separate case that was a sibil case that the daughters sued Pam, and that's where there's a lot of video which has become sort of iconic video of Pam acting out in all these different ways in that deposition.
00:18:53
Speaker 1: And that's the whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa who.
00:18:57
Speaker 2: That's which we recreated in our show. But and you see at the end of the series they show the real footage and I'm sure it's everywhere online if you wanted to see that. But yeah, just for going whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, and a lot of other things and a lot of like real testiness with the attorneys and you know, erratic behavior. And she was just used to changing her story at every turn. She would just make up new testimony. Suddenly she and Betsy had a love relationship.
00:19:25
Speaker 1: That was a thing that came later, right, right, I forgot about that.
00:19:30
Speaker 2: We just had a love you know, this love connection, and that just came out of nowhere down the road. It wasn't. In her original testimony, there were a lot of things like that, she just you know, and she had put a typed a letter on Betsy's computer that was supposed to be from Betsy to Pam or to somebody saying like that Russ was abusing her and all right, and they were able to use that against her in the trial. They were able to prove that it wasn't uh, it wasn't natural to a computer that somehow.
00:20:06
Speaker 1: Right, it was like from it it was like the difference between like a MAC and a and a you know, a PC or something like.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: It didn't He was trying to make it look like Pam had written all the stuff but then never sent the letter, and she'd done a couple of things like that, right, and then claimed like why would I, you know, if I was going to do it, you know, my mother has five hundred thousand dollars life insurance policy, like if I needed the money, you know, she kind of gave herself it was.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: A way, and it turns out I do need that money.
00:20:40
Speaker 5: So now she's I can't the whole the whole letter's part of it too, Like that one and then there's another letter, like when she says in the in the show, she says, after killing.
00:20:55
Speaker 1: Rumpenberg, I'm never gonna remember his name. Rumpenberger, right with a G, Yeah with a gg when she killed After she kills Gumpenberger and says to the police, you might want to check about there's a little letter sticking out of his pocket. You know, that was like she clearly wrote saying, you know, seem I mean, she.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: Could have gotten away scott free because I think she guessed that she had this terrible response to the idea that Russ had gotten out of prison because the case would have been left alone at that point. But then she tried to fabricate this whole story where Russ had hired this man to kill her. Calls nine one one, so you hear them on this nine one one call, and then she kills him in cold blood, I mean.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: Allegedly, allegedly. Let's talk about the mom for a second. That her death. So her mother was discovered dead after falling from the balcony at her assisted living home, and then they also found an extraordinary amount of ambient in her system, like ten times the amount that she should have or something so do you think that she's responsible.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: She was the last person who saw her, and yeah, all the ambient and then some concocted like faulty railing right well, certainly seemed like it, but that was not At the time of our show. That case had not been prosecuted. Maybe it was being investigated still or I'm not sure where the authorities left that case.
00:22:45
Speaker 1: But right I think it's still being investigated right now, it'll probably be up and coming. It's what's so disturbing, obviously about her is that she comes across as so ordinary at first and so actually congenial in some regard, and then but she's obviously deeply ill. Were there any were there moments when you were shooting this where you felt like, I can't believe that this is real.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: I mean, that was most of it. Yeah, but it was so specific. The details were so specific that it had to be real, because who could make this up except that except her? You know that right about things was so strange. But also I'm a lifelong New Yorker, so you know, that's why I said about trying to get into Russ's head. I was like, you know, I would be so naturally skeptical of everything that was going on. So the idea rightsting and you know, of the legal system and everything and everyone and even says like, oh to his lawyer, Oh yeah, Pam Hope, she's a nice lady. I don't think he really knew her that well or thought that much about her. That was so out of nowhere for most of these people that, right. I think she was trying upon herself off as like a better friend than she actually was.
00:24:08
Speaker 1: Right, So that's what. Yeah, I was curious about.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: It, and somehow convinced her to or however she manipulated that insurance policy. I don't know. I don't remember the details of that. But nobody saw her coming because he mid West, and people don't be that way, or you don't expect them to. And I think it's just one of those small towns where people are a lot more trusting.
00:24:35
Speaker 1: Right, It's like a similar I just spoke with doctor Ramslan who's a criminologist and an author and a professor, and she did this over ten year interview with the BTK killer, Dennis Raider, and I mean that is wow. But he is similar in the sense of was like very much a member of the community. You know, was involved with everybody to some degree, and you know, just sort of folded himself into the fabric. But did Russ say that they were anything about how you know, his relationship with her, because it did seem like he didn't really even know her that well.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we had lines in the show where she accuses him of smoking around Betsy even though she had cancer, and he said, like, she's never seen me smoke, he says to one of the lawyers, like it really, you know, it was a cordial relationship. But I just don't think he really thought much about her or really knew her. Just thought she was this nice lady that Betsy used to work with, and then suddenly like she insinuated her way to their lives in this way that he wasn't even aware of. But I know that by the end he really wanted to see her put away and he wanted to be there for he wanted to be involved in this trial once it was reopened.
00:26:00
Speaker 1: Oh I bet, I bet. Did he have any feelings about the Alfred It's Alfred right?
00:26:06
Speaker 2: Is that what alf Alfred plea?
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the plead where you do not admit your guilt but you plead guilty.
00:26:15
Speaker 2: Yes, I only learned about that through the show. I'd never heard of that before.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: I had never heard of that either, So yeah.
00:26:22
Speaker 2: It's very consistent her character that in confessing, she would do it in a sort of hot, haughty way.
00:26:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not admitting that she's guilty.
00:26:33
Speaker 2: It's almost like a political move, right. Yeah. I don't think that was satisfying to a lot of people, including most of Betsy's family.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure, right, But you know.
00:26:47
Speaker 2: It wasn't satisfying or to the new regime of politicians that took over at that time, right, because it made a lot of people look bad. It made that whole.
00:27:01
Speaker 1: It certainly made it look like a little bit of a circus in terms of their whole you know, their court system and there in the police department and all of it. So, yes, the definition is it allows a defendant to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence too, basically, Yes, yes, yes, exactly exactly. Oh my gosh, well, I this has been super fascinating. Have you ever played anyone like this? I know you always do play very scary. You're usually the other the other slide characters.
00:27:39
Speaker 2: From time to time. But this was a great departure and it was almost like the opposite challenge, like I said, because he was so trusting and had so much faith. It was almost the opposite of like what you were talking about about. Some of these characters we know from true true crime, but also people have played in fictional crime where they're either hiding in plain sight or you know, have all these suterior motives. And here was somebody who's like so banking on the truth to set him free every turn, so trying to trust that and traumatized by the way the system worked. You see him actually get called in. I guess it was after them. It's later in the series. I think it's after the Gumpenberger situation because Russ's name was invoked in that scenario that right concted. They called him in. He was like, I'm in Florida and they were like, you have to come back to Missouri.
00:28:38
Speaker 1: And that was a great scene.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: He's traumatized, you know, in his lyric saying it's gonna be okay, We're going to wait this out. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to wait here and let them clear you. But you know, you could imagine how terrifying. Oh, I've already gone through that situation where the system completely let you down.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally failed him. And why would he you know, he assume it could just happen again. Yeah, he does seem when I've watched a couple of interviews of him post you know, more more current, and he does just seems like such a like a kind hearted person. You know, he seems like a very somehow has come through this.
00:29:21
Speaker 2: You know, he was not bitter.
00:29:25
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly, That's a great way to say it.
00:29:27
Speaker 2: Years after. I mean, obviously the legal proceedings were still happening involving various aspects of this case, but it had been a while since he had done time and all that, he'd gotten his life together and had love in his life and all of that. But obviously the family hadn't completely recovered, and there were there was a lot of pain, but he was not bitter. He learned from the experience, and yeah, it was just like a real man of faith.
00:29:58
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's an admirable response most certainly.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: As far as what I could tell enough. I don't want to act like I'm an expert on him, because you know, so talking over a few days. Sure, sure, very generous of him to do that and be so to be so open with me, and it was in valuable of course.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I I've loved talking about this and you can stream the show. The thing about Pam, it's a really really uh incredibly well done series and you're terrific in it, Rene Cellware, terrific in it. Everybody, the whole cast is great. What can we see you in next? What are you doing? What are you working on?
00:30:42
Speaker 2: What do you want to tell us? In the New York area, I'm seeing Romeo and Juliet inral bar playing a little capula Juliet's father.
00:30:50
Speaker 1: Stop it are you doing Shakespeare? You're doing the Shakespeare in the Park this summer.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. Classic.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: I'm a New Yorker, so I'm from New York, so I this is like, oh, I'm so excited for you.
00:31:05
Speaker 2: The third time it's been done, oddly, even though Shakespeare and the Park has been going on since like the late fifties, early since third production. I was kind of shocked to learn that because it seems like a play that's done all the time. So yeah, we're a few weeks into rehearsals now, so that's that's the next big thing.
00:31:22
Speaker 1: Ah that is when what are the dates? When does that run?
00:31:27
Speaker 2: It starts in late May and it runs till June twenty eighth, so it's early part of summer. Oh.
00:31:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to be there for a couple of days. I'm going to try to get myself in there. It's very hard. It's hard to get seats for that free.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: So that's the great part. But you do have to wait. You have to wait, right.
00:31:48
Speaker 1: I might have to get my sleeping bag.
00:31:52
Speaker 2: And wait for tickets and right right.
00:31:56
Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a wonderful experience. I'm so excited for you. It'll be amazing.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
00:32:04
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for talking with me, Glenn. I hope we get a chance to do it again. Maybe you know, you'll play a serial killer next time.
00:32:14
Speaker 5: Make a chat again, very much,
Speaker 1: Amy Roboc and TJ. Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host Alisa Donovan. Hey everyone, Elisa Donovan here and this is Killer Thriller. What if you came home one night to find your spouse brutally murdered and within days you were the one being accused of the crime. Well, that's exactly what happened to Russ Farrea, a man who was wrongfully convicted, spent years in prison, and was later exonerated for killing his wife. It all unfolds in The Thing About Pam, a series starring Renee Zellweger based on the real life case, and it is full of outrageous twists, shocking events, and ever shifting narratives, and the real life case is still playing out in the courts. Today we are joined by Glenn Fleschler, who plays the role of rus Firea. Glenn, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited to talk to you about this show. So first, I loved this series so very much, and you're so wonderful in it, as is everyone. And you know, it's such a unique kind of tone that sort of leans into the I think bizarre and you know nature of the whole crime. But before you were cast, did you know anything about it? Did you had you heard about Pam Hup or the case?
00:01:33
Speaker 2: No, I knew not a thing about it.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: Wow, So you just read the script and went, wow, this isn't is this real?
00:01:41
Speaker 2: I don't remember what I read right away. I do remember that I got an audition, and you know how sometimes you know, you want to put your best foot forward, and sometimes you just don't have time.
00:01:57
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:01:57
Speaker 2: This was one of those times where I think I was doing like multiple jobs, and uh, this audition came in and I said, well, this is kind of interesting, but I don't really have time to do it. Like I almost didn't do it. And then I was like, I think I'm going to have to just like do one take and just get it done. I don't know if I had your phones in my ear. There was something weird that I did with the phone call. It was Russ's nine to one one phone call and it was a lot of historyonics.
00:02:28
Speaker 1: And oh my gosh.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember thinking this is terrible. This is terrible, you know what I mean, Like I almost send it right like this is all I had time to do. You know, sometimes you got to let yourself look and be like, well, this is this is.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: What I gues, this is what I got.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: In the running. But I ended up getting the job. And in fact, over the months that we were working on this, from time to time that producers would talk about my audition, they'd be like, it was such a great audition and I would cringe because I just, my god, so terrible. And I knew that I could do a better job once I, you know, really prepare for the role. But right I never, I just was it was just a good faith that I got that.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so funny. There's something like that's you know, great about that for us to remember sometimes we're meant for certain parts and that's just the way it is. And sort of you're you're a built irnate ability and your first instinct is the right one and it's great, you know, So it's a good lesson for your lesson.
00:03:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also like, you can't get cast if you don't put yourself in the running. So sometimes I think like I have to be right. I'm sorry, I got to get it perfect, and sometimes you're just you know, what they're looking for.
00:03:43
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I firmly believe that. So okay, So just for the people that are maybe unfamiliar with the details of the case, we'll just like do a quick run through of what they are. In December of twenty eleven, this woman, Pam Hup, she is a house flipper, married woman in Missouri. She becomes a sole beneficiary of her friend Betsy Furrea's life insurance policy. Five days later, Betsy is murdered in her home and stabbed multiple times. They arrest the husband your character, mainly based on kind of the things that Pam tells them about him, about their relationship, et cetera. So he serves three years in prison, then he is exonerated. Then Pam Hup kills this other man, Lewis Gumpenberger, in her home, claiming self defense. She's charged with first degree murder, and it just goes on and on and on, like the insanity of this person is right, and then probably her mother, like she's really relentless in her kind of pursuit of But we've just got like we talk a lot about a lot of narcissists on this show, because oftentimes the these sorts of killers are incredibly narcissistic, and you know, she acts as though it's not her fault that she I mean, she quite literally makes up lies, but then you know, always sort of claiming that she's injured and that it's someone else's problem. And I mean, when you realize that this was a real story, what was your like? Did you could you believe it? What did you think?
00:05:25
Speaker 2: I mean, there was so much to it, and Pam Hupp herself was such an extreme character, and also so was Russell. And what I was attracted to was the fact that normally I am the guy who commits the.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: Murderer, right, That's what I was thinking, Yeah.
00:05:44
Speaker 2: Murderers, and so I was like, in this case, I didn't do it, So that was attractive, right. But the main part, the main gist of the experience for me, was talking to our showrunner Jenny Klein. I had the good sense to call her and just say, like, I haven't really talked to anyone about this show. I'm supposed to go to New Orleans and shoot it. We had gotten postponed because of a hurricane that happened. Oh, things got delayed a month, and I just sort of felt like I haven't really I've been doing my own you know, watching the dateline stuff, whatever research I could get my hands on at the time, but I thought I should talk to somebody, and luckily I called Jenny and we had this great conversation and she said, you know, I think you should meet Russell Faria, who was the character.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: Yes, so did you tell me so?
00:06:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she put us in touch and we ended up having hours and hours of phone conversations over several days. He was actually on a road trip. It was like driving across country, and so we would have to time it out so that he could be somewhere where he would have you know, Wi Fi or something. So we did it in these kind of increments, and then we'd have these like really long talks for hours and I was just scribbling away, and you know, I'm not an interviewer, but I was like, I got to really get focused because I want to get all the good stuff. Luckily, he made it so easy because he was so forthcoming with all them. You know, I had to there was no way around it. I had to go into like the worst details of his life, right death of his wife and the subsequent horror that he went through, and there was no way to not ask him about those things. But He really made it so easy and was so forthcoming, and my big not reservation, but my like the challenge of playing the role was you know, you look at this from the outset, from the outside, and you think, how can this guy have gone this long? For instance, he didn't ask for a lawyer. Yes, he gurrogated him for twenty four hours straight.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: Right, That's what I was wondering too.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: And he didn't, you know, he didn't really protest that strongly. He just kind of let it happen to him. And so that, you know, it comes off being like, you know, how could somebody be this kind of naive or and when I talked to him, I just you know, it really was a matter of he had such faith, he had such faith in the legal system and that it was going to come out, and so he just let them bamboozle him basically, right. But then it was that same faith that got him through several years in prison, being wrongly in prison before he got that appeal and was able to get his name clear. So that was all really fascinating and useful.
00:08:33
Speaker 1: Did he say anything about because I remember thinking he you know, if he was he had been out with friends at the friend's house playing games and you know, like a sort of normal gathering that he had with his friends, and you know, drinking a little or getting a little high, and then that kind of like that sort of shock has got to have some impact. And then not sleeping and staying up, and I mean did he talk at all about like I think about, you know, if I have a little too much wine at a friend's house and come home and come to something like that, like it must be like you can't even believe your eyes. I mean, I mean that was.
00:09:12
Speaker 2: Part of the factoring in of playing it all because if you listen to the real nine to one one call, it does seem you know, it's what Pam hump and what the prosecuting attorneys played off of that. It seemed like a performance because it was so hysterical. The nine to one one operator thought it was a woman at first, and that was what I had to do in the audition. So you want it to be true to life, but also as extreme as it is. I mean, if you played it really the way that when you listen to it, if you played it straight like, no one would believe it, right. But of course it's hard for any of us to put ourselves in such a horrifying situation, and he came home to such a grizzly, extreme scene. So it was just like that was where we were starting from. That's basically the start of the show and the kind of right upsetting incident.
00:10:05
Speaker 1: Did he say why? I was also struck why he said on the call, And maybe it was just because you know, he was befuddled, and I don't know what anyone would say, but he says that she, his wife, killed herself. And it seems like did he say why? That was the instinct that he instead of saying someone killed her.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: She had had a cancer diagnosis, she had struggled with depression. I don't. I don't remember now, but I think there were possibly earlier attempts, so that's where his mind went. There were slashes across her arms, right wrists, but I mean that was also part of the confounding nature of the interrogation, was that she had been stabbed so many times and it was so much blood. And what it turned out was that I think that a lot of the wounds were post mortem, so very staged, right, right. I didn't No, I don't think he could process what he was.
00:11:14
Speaker 1: Right, right. It really is so fascinating to me because it reveals how innocent people like that. To me just strikes at all of the actual facts strike me as an innocent person, like that's how they would respond, but how those things can be twisted into making it seem like he's guilty. It's just like it's crazy to me.
00:11:50
Speaker 2: It was a sort of a perfect storm with this, you know, testimony from Pam who was manipulating things behind the scenes, but also a process computer who wanted things to go a certain way, and her relationship with a judge who right relationship. There were a lot of things that shouldn't have gone on that went on, and you know, by detector tests and trying to coerce a confession. Well it's the case, you know, we portray it in the show like, oh the husband did it, like that's what the cops are saying, because that's what usually happens. And so it just fell into that narrative, and unfortunately Russ was so trusting that he didn't fight it in such a way that maybe some things would.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Have come to light sooner sooner, a.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: Terrific alibi, and they kind of.
00:12:43
Speaker 1: Just blew past that, right, that was very striking to me that it's there were four or five people that said, no, he was.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: With us same night, and then he went to an RB's and there was a receipt timestamped that he had been at this Arby's. We depicted it in the show of me, yeah, I ordering uh these sandwiches. Hey. In fact, we have a group text the actors in our show called Arby's and Game Night because with Arby's and Game Night as like that, right defense, and.
00:13:19
Speaker 3: So so they they also portray or at least Pam talks about him Russ as being having a temper and that he's you know, a little dark and brooding, and he doesn't it was that?
00:13:34
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that accurate? Did he say that was true? And then even the kids a little bit saying, well, the kids don't deny it.
00:13:41
Speaker 3: I guess it's sort of a gray area.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Led by the nose to make that testimony, you have to ask them. I don't remember if Russ copped to any sort of dark behavior. I mean, I know that he and Betsy had, you know, had an on again, off again situation. They had gone through troubles in their marriage, and Pam definitely tried to play off of that, but apparently, according to the people who knew them, they were in a good place when these events happened, and Russ was very close with his stepdaughters that he raised from the age of roughly five. I think this one maybe, and and that was just a terrible rupture in their family, and they were pushed to testify against him, as was Betsy's mother loved Russ, and between Pam and the authorities and the prosecutors, they kind of convinced her that he was guilty. And she sends a message at some point through his attorney that she's so sorry.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean in their kid you know, there their kids and they're young, and it's it's all really tragic. I've read also that that he doesn't speak to that he still hasn't spoken to the.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: Children as of the conclusion of our show, and I guess around when the show aired, which was my last contact with people from the story, they had not reconciled. He hadn't spoken to them, and I did ask him about that, and that was probably the place where he was the most clammed up. But yeah, I felt that he could not ridge that gap at that point. I think right felt like such an extreme betrayal, but I believe it was very painful for all involved. And our showrunner Jenny certainly leaned into that part of the story.
00:15:49
Speaker 4: She really wanted getting an Adlon who played daughter and I to have, you know, for that to be a significant part of the story their rupture right right.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: And there is a beautiful part in the in the end with Russ and his current wife. I think they're married, yes, Carol, that so, and is that part as.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: Of the time of the show. I don't know what happened after that. Yeah, A very coincidental thing that she she became a witness in the Gumpenberger murder because Pam showed up at her house trying to lure her and did lure her into her car need to be someone from dateline and offering her money to go ride with her, and as though she was going to pay her tax free or some voiceover work or something to do with dateline.
00:16:44
Speaker 1: Using date Line which comes from so diabolical.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: This woman eventually smelled a rat and saved her life by getting out of this car before the Gumpenberger incident. And then she somehow got introduced to Russ through one of his game like friends, knew her was a neighbor or something, and then they ended up becoming engaged of dating for years after that.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yes, they're saying that they are still together and they were just outside of the courthouse. I guess where Pam is being. They have a new the new trial, the trial for the murder of Betsy. It's very hard to keep track of this woman's crimes. But this is, uh, they were spotted together. It was this beautiful scene of you know, it's this is this is the thing that's always like, uh, there's always something or I should say, I always look for something that's beautiful and hopeful in the kind of the humanity part of all of these stories. And that just seems like a nice one that those two, you know, found each other. So this the let's talk a little bit about the So this the life insurance part of the whole thing. So she so not just that Pam. So she became the beneficiary of Betsy's life insurance. And then but the explanation around all of that kept changing, and I just and that the kids she was supposed to set up a an account for the children, which they never received the money, and the fact that all of these things did not become true evidence in the first case is like, I can't understand any of that. It just makes no sense.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: Right. So they had a separate case that was a sibil case that the daughters sued Pam, and that's where there's a lot of video which has become sort of iconic video of Pam acting out in all these different ways in that deposition.
00:18:53
Speaker 1: And that's the whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa who.
00:18:57
Speaker 2: That's which we recreated in our show. But and you see at the end of the series they show the real footage and I'm sure it's everywhere online if you wanted to see that. But yeah, just for going whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, and a lot of other things and a lot of like real testiness with the attorneys and you know, erratic behavior. And she was just used to changing her story at every turn. She would just make up new testimony. Suddenly she and Betsy had a love relationship.
00:19:25
Speaker 1: That was a thing that came later, right, right, I forgot about that.
00:19:30
Speaker 2: We just had a love you know, this love connection, and that just came out of nowhere down the road. It wasn't. In her original testimony, there were a lot of things like that, she just you know, and she had put a typed a letter on Betsy's computer that was supposed to be from Betsy to Pam or to somebody saying like that Russ was abusing her and all right, and they were able to use that against her in the trial. They were able to prove that it wasn't uh, it wasn't natural to a computer that somehow.
00:20:06
Speaker 1: Right, it was like from it it was like the difference between like a MAC and a and a you know, a PC or something like.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: It didn't He was trying to make it look like Pam had written all the stuff but then never sent the letter, and she'd done a couple of things like that, right, and then claimed like why would I, you know, if I was going to do it, you know, my mother has five hundred thousand dollars life insurance policy, like if I needed the money, you know, she kind of gave herself it was.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: A way, and it turns out I do need that money.
00:20:40
Speaker 5: So now she's I can't the whole the whole letter's part of it too, Like that one and then there's another letter, like when she says in the in the show, she says, after killing.
00:20:55
Speaker 1: Rumpenberg, I'm never gonna remember his name. Rumpenberger, right with a G, Yeah with a gg when she killed After she kills Gumpenberger and says to the police, you might want to check about there's a little letter sticking out of his pocket. You know, that was like she clearly wrote saying, you know, seem I mean, she.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: Could have gotten away scott free because I think she guessed that she had this terrible response to the idea that Russ had gotten out of prison because the case would have been left alone at that point. But then she tried to fabricate this whole story where Russ had hired this man to kill her. Calls nine one one, so you hear them on this nine one one call, and then she kills him in cold blood, I mean.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: Allegedly, allegedly. Let's talk about the mom for a second. That her death. So her mother was discovered dead after falling from the balcony at her assisted living home, and then they also found an extraordinary amount of ambient in her system, like ten times the amount that she should have or something so do you think that she's responsible.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: She was the last person who saw her, and yeah, all the ambient and then some concocted like faulty railing right well, certainly seemed like it, but that was not At the time of our show. That case had not been prosecuted. Maybe it was being investigated still or I'm not sure where the authorities left that case.
00:22:45
Speaker 1: But right I think it's still being investigated right now, it'll probably be up and coming. It's what's so disturbing, obviously about her is that she comes across as so ordinary at first and so actually congenial in some regard, and then but she's obviously deeply ill. Were there any were there moments when you were shooting this where you felt like, I can't believe that this is real.
00:23:17
Speaker 2: I mean, that was most of it. Yeah, but it was so specific. The details were so specific that it had to be real, because who could make this up except that except her? You know that right about things was so strange. But also I'm a lifelong New Yorker, so you know, that's why I said about trying to get into Russ's head. I was like, you know, I would be so naturally skeptical of everything that was going on. So the idea rightsting and you know, of the legal system and everything and everyone and even says like, oh to his lawyer, Oh yeah, Pam Hope, she's a nice lady. I don't think he really knew her that well or thought that much about her. That was so out of nowhere for most of these people that, right. I think she was trying upon herself off as like a better friend than she actually was.
00:24:08
Speaker 1: Right, So that's what. Yeah, I was curious about.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: It, and somehow convinced her to or however she manipulated that insurance policy. I don't know. I don't remember the details of that. But nobody saw her coming because he mid West, and people don't be that way, or you don't expect them to. And I think it's just one of those small towns where people are a lot more trusting.
00:24:35
Speaker 1: Right, It's like a similar I just spoke with doctor Ramslan who's a criminologist and an author and a professor, and she did this over ten year interview with the BTK killer, Dennis Raider, and I mean that is wow. But he is similar in the sense of was like very much a member of the community. You know, was involved with everybody to some degree, and you know, just sort of folded himself into the fabric. But did Russ say that they were anything about how you know, his relationship with her, because it did seem like he didn't really even know her that well.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we had lines in the show where she accuses him of smoking around Betsy even though she had cancer, and he said, like, she's never seen me smoke, he says to one of the lawyers, like it really, you know, it was a cordial relationship. But I just don't think he really thought much about her or really knew her. Just thought she was this nice lady that Betsy used to work with, and then suddenly like she insinuated her way to their lives in this way that he wasn't even aware of. But I know that by the end he really wanted to see her put away and he wanted to be there for he wanted to be involved in this trial once it was reopened.
00:26:00
Speaker 1: Oh I bet, I bet. Did he have any feelings about the Alfred It's Alfred right?
00:26:06
Speaker 2: Is that what alf Alfred plea?
00:26:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the plead where you do not admit your guilt but you plead guilty.
00:26:15
Speaker 2: Yes, I only learned about that through the show. I'd never heard of that before.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: I had never heard of that either, So yeah.
00:26:22
Speaker 2: It's very consistent her character that in confessing, she would do it in a sort of hot, haughty way.
00:26:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not admitting that she's guilty.
00:26:33
Speaker 2: It's almost like a political move, right. Yeah. I don't think that was satisfying to a lot of people, including most of Betsy's family.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure, right, But you know.
00:26:47
Speaker 2: It wasn't satisfying or to the new regime of politicians that took over at that time, right, because it made a lot of people look bad. It made that whole.
00:27:01
Speaker 1: It certainly made it look like a little bit of a circus in terms of their whole you know, their court system and there in the police department and all of it. So, yes, the definition is it allows a defendant to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence too, basically, Yes, yes, yes, exactly exactly. Oh my gosh, well, I this has been super fascinating. Have you ever played anyone like this? I know you always do play very scary. You're usually the other the other slide characters.
00:27:39
Speaker 2: From time to time. But this was a great departure and it was almost like the opposite challenge, like I said, because he was so trusting and had so much faith. It was almost the opposite of like what you were talking about about. Some of these characters we know from true true crime, but also people have played in fictional crime where they're either hiding in plain sight or you know, have all these suterior motives. And here was somebody who's like so banking on the truth to set him free every turn, so trying to trust that and traumatized by the way the system worked. You see him actually get called in. I guess it was after them. It's later in the series. I think it's after the Gumpenberger situation because Russ's name was invoked in that scenario that right concted. They called him in. He was like, I'm in Florida and they were like, you have to come back to Missouri.
00:28:38
Speaker 1: And that was a great scene.
00:28:41
Speaker 2: He's traumatized, you know, in his lyric saying it's gonna be okay, We're going to wait this out. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to wait here and let them clear you. But you know, you could imagine how terrifying. Oh, I've already gone through that situation where the system completely let you down.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally failed him. And why would he you know, he assume it could just happen again. Yeah, he does seem when I've watched a couple of interviews of him post you know, more more current, and he does just seems like such a like a kind hearted person. You know, he seems like a very somehow has come through this.
00:29:21
Speaker 2: You know, he was not bitter.
00:29:25
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly, That's a great way to say it.
00:29:27
Speaker 2: Years after. I mean, obviously the legal proceedings were still happening involving various aspects of this case, but it had been a while since he had done time and all that, he'd gotten his life together and had love in his life and all of that. But obviously the family hadn't completely recovered, and there were there was a lot of pain, but he was not bitter. He learned from the experience, and yeah, it was just like a real man of faith.
00:29:58
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's an admirable response most certainly.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: As far as what I could tell enough. I don't want to act like I'm an expert on him, because you know, so talking over a few days. Sure, sure, very generous of him to do that and be so to be so open with me, and it was in valuable of course.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I I've loved talking about this and you can stream the show. The thing about Pam, it's a really really uh incredibly well done series and you're terrific in it, Rene Cellware, terrific in it. Everybody, the whole cast is great. What can we see you in next? What are you doing? What are you working on?
00:30:42
Speaker 2: What do you want to tell us? In the New York area, I'm seeing Romeo and Juliet inral bar playing a little capula Juliet's father.
00:30:50
Speaker 1: Stop it are you doing Shakespeare? You're doing the Shakespeare in the Park this summer.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. Classic.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: I'm a New Yorker, so I'm from New York, so I this is like, oh, I'm so excited for you.
00:31:05
Speaker 2: The third time it's been done, oddly, even though Shakespeare and the Park has been going on since like the late fifties, early since third production. I was kind of shocked to learn that because it seems like a play that's done all the time. So yeah, we're a few weeks into rehearsals now, so that's that's the next big thing.
00:31:22
Speaker 1: Ah that is when what are the dates? When does that run?
00:31:27
Speaker 2: It starts in late May and it runs till June twenty eighth, so it's early part of summer. Oh.
00:31:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to be there for a couple of days. I'm going to try to get myself in there. It's very hard. It's hard to get seats for that free.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: So that's the great part. But you do have to wait. You have to wait, right.
00:31:48
Speaker 1: I might have to get my sleeping bag.
00:31:52
Speaker 2: And wait for tickets and right right.
00:31:56
Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a wonderful experience. I'm so excited for you. It'll be amazing.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
00:32:04
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for talking with me, Glenn. I hope we get a chance to do it again. Maybe you know, you'll play a serial killer next time.
00:32:14
Speaker 5: Make a chat again, very much,
