John Wigger, a history professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, wrote the book PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire.
The movie conveys how Tammy Faye’s earnest, spontaneous and larger than life personality caught the public imagination. Appeals for donations from viewers helped swell their ministry, including Heritage USA, a Disney-style theme park and resort in South Carolina.Įarly in their careers, the Bakkers created a puppet show for children, which caught Robertson’s eye and led to TV work. The film, based on a 2000 documentary, portrays the young Tammy Faye and Jim (played by the British actor Andrew Garfield) as happy warriors for Christianity, injecting joy into an otherwise staid and punitive religion preached by Jerry Falwell Sr and Pat Robertson.Īt its height The PTL Club, the couple’s flagship TV programme, was seen in 13m households. It was the raw emotional authenticity of the 24-minute interview that inspired Chastain to make a movie about Tammy Faye, who achieved stardom with her husband, Jim Bakker, through the PTL (Praise the Lord) network only to be brought down by financial and sex scandals. “It was just amazing and I love the way they used my interview as a pivotal point in the film. “It was a bit surreal to hear an actor saying the actual words I said to Tammy Faye all those years ago and to see Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye interacting with Randy Havens as me,” Pieters, 69, says by phone.