Hulu went on quite the run last year in regard to original limited series based on the lives of real-life celebrities, with shows including Pam & Tommy, Mike and Pistol generating some of the subscription streaming service's biggest audiences in 2022.
But while these originals proved popular with Hulu subscribers, each of them drew public acrimony from their respective main subjects.
Speaking to the Penske Showbiz Trade Conglomerate earlier this week, Pamela Anderson became the latest to lash out against Hulu. This of course came after the unauthorized biopic Pam & Tommy seemed to only exacerbate 25-year-old wounds from another media spectacle that also casted Anderson as its star, but also unfairly gave her absolutely no control over the outcome, the infamous sex tape with drummer Tommy Lee.
“Assholes,” she said to Variety, describing the original series' makers. “Salt on the wound. … You still owe me a public apology.”
Last year, Hulu also drew fire from Mike Tyson, after its miniseries Mike seemed to use the boxer's real-life spoken-word memoirs as the jumping-off point for a dramatic re-enactment of his controversial life -- with absolutely none of the production or development actually involving Tyson himself.
“Don’t let Hulu fool you. I don’t support their story about my life,” Tyson wrote in an Instagram post. “They stole my life story and didn’t pay me.”
Also never one to shy away from public confrontation, former Sex Pistols lead singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) took Hulu to task for Pistol, claiming the biopic about his legendary late-1970s punk band was similarly made without any input from its key surviving stakeholders.
"It’s dead against everything we once stood for," Lydon told The Guardian. "The only thing you’ve got of value in your life, and you’re going to cheapen that because you want an extra fiver? Not much of a human being there."
