A prosthetic chest, hours of tattoos: How 'Pam & Tommy' transformed Lily James, Sebastian Stan

The task: Transform actors known for playing Cinderella and the Winter Soldier into a buxom blonde "Playboy" cover girl and her tattooed rock star husband well enough to satisfy the motley crew of internet obsessives.

The resemblance of stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee was stunning when Hulu released the first images from "Pam & Tommy," its eight-part outrageous dramedy (first three episodes streaming Wednesday) back in May. The limited series chronicles the brief four-day courtship between the "Baywatch" actress and the M?tley Crüe drummer before they wed in 1995 on a Cancun, Mexico, beach dressed in bathing suits. Anderson was 27; Lee was 32.

"Pam & Tommy" mainly focuses on the fallout after an electrician (Seth Rogen), unpaid by Lee, obtains an intimate tape between Anderson and Lee and begins selling it on the internet.

"Nobody wanted to take the shortcut or compromise on anything," Jason Collins, special makeup effects designer for "Pam & Tommy," says, speaking for makeup department head David Williams, hair department head Barry Lee Moe and costume designer Kameron Lennox. "It's one of those rare projects where everybody is firing on all cylinders and lightning strikes."

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Emulating Anderson and Lee is a tall order when you consider how their looks are fixed in the public consciousness. Most people of a certain age can conjure the image of Anderson in her "Baywatch" one-piece, so Lennox knew the correct cut and color would be vital for the one they created. "There was a lot of swatching and a lot of research to find out who made their bathing suits originally, which we did uncover," she says.

The team also wanted to avoid a caricature of Anderson, a pinup come to life. In light of the devastation the tape caused Anderson, Moe "really wanted to make sure that we weren't making a joke out of this ... (that) we weren't doing Pam drag," he says. "It had to feel real, and it had to honor her and who she was at that time because she was a beauty icon."

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James' transformation took about four hours each day, says Williams, who began analyzing side by side photos of James, 32, and Anderson. James needed more space between her eyes and her hairline; a prosthetic forehead also worked to conceal James' natural brows. Lace eyebrows applied to the prosthetic forehead mimicked Anderson's, thin like Jean Harlow's. Upper and lower dental pieces recreated Anderson's smile and subtly pushed James' top lip out. "After that, it's a little paint'll make you what you ain't," says Williams. "Highlights, shadows, contours that enhance the prosthetic, that change structure." James also wore contact lenses to conceal her brown eyes. (Anderson's are blue.)

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A prosthetic chest made of medical-grade silicone provided Anderson's curves. Collins says the breasts James wore were sculpted "three or four times to get them perfect. It's more than just the way they look. It's how the whole appliance moves." Anderson's tendency to wear garments that show skin posed anotherchallenge.

James wore four wigs to spare James' naturally dark hair and to achieve continuity in terms of hair color and density, Moe says. The wigs were custom-made and knotted by hand, after looking "at 30 different shades to find the perfect blond because Pam was known for coloring her own hair at home, through most of her life, with drugstore color."

Lennox's goal was to source wardrobe not made for the series from designers she says Anderson favored at that time, like Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Azzedine Ala?a, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. "We went into it very clear that we wanted it to be as close to the original as possible," Lennox says. "So there was a lot of meticulous fine-tuning, especially of the bathing suit, with many fittings to make sure all the cuts hit Lily's body exactly the same as it hit Pam in all the photos and videos we were watching."

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Drumming up the Tommy Lee in Sebastian Stan

Stan, 39, took about three hours to transform into Lee on most days of filming, with about two hours of that time devoted to replicating Lee's tattoos, says Collins. A 3-D scan of Stan's body enabled designers to create the tattoos – Stan wore more than 30 at a time – to fit his body. Williams says he couldn't use the exact tattoos for legal reasons, "so we do a variation of them that is run by our legal department."

Stan, a Romanian actor who first gained notoriety for his role in "Gossip Girl" and later appeared in several Marvel films and "I, Tonya," maintained facial stubble, Williams says, and wore a touch of Tom Ford bronzer. He colored his light eyes with brown contacts. Stan's eyebrows were darkened along with his soul patch to match his dyed locks. Stan's hair was styled to help elongate his face so it more closely resembled Lee.

Stan donned prosthetic nipples, which took about 45 minutes to apply, to attach Lee's nipple rings, says Collins. They stayed put – even as James tugged at one with her teeth, thanks to a medical adhesive. Collins also created a prosthetic penis, which Lee converses with in the show, as the real Lee described in his 2004 memoir "Tommyland."

In the mid-90s, Lee's style was "more jeans, T-shirts and boots," says Lennox. "Still rock and roll, but not as glam or theatrical as he was known to be."

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Lennox says the stylists' work would be for naught if it wasn't for James and Stan.

"When I offer something or put something on somebody, it's how they hold themselves in the clothing that really tells me if it's going to work or not," Lennox says. "Immediately, both of them were able to put these clothes on and then really feel that character. They worked it. They held it."

Moe describes James, a British actress also known for "Downton Abbey" and "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again," as "an A+ student of Pamela Anderson. She knew every interview, word for word, that she had ever done." Williams recalls James "even using that four hours (in hair and makeup) judiciously in the trailer every day: She would be watching interviews, doing (Anderson's) accent."

Collins remembers James "Letting me know when something was slightly off, or she felt like her expression wasn't coming through. You can be the best, but until somebody really, really embodies that character and wears that – that's when you have total success."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pam and Tommy: Lily James and Sebastian Stan's dramatic transformation