As a member of the Barnes family, Pamela was initially met with suspicion and hostility from the rival Ewing family after she had married Bobby Ewing and moved onto the Southfork Ranch to live with her new husband. The strongest hostility towards Pamela came from Bobby's older brother, J.R. Ewing, who tried to drive Pamela off Southfork Ranch with methods of bribery and intimidation, as well as trying to con Bobby into believing that Pamela was having an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Ray Krebbs. Principal, who wanted to represent her character's outsider perception of the family, would portray this with the cast. Leonard Katzman described her as being "the world's most isolated lady". When confronted by Katzman about why Principal chose to be isolated from everyone else, he described the situation as: "After a while, I thought, 'Maybe she doesn't like us'. I went to see her. She said, 'No, I like everybody. It's just that I want to feel like an outsider, like Pam Barnes does, being married to a Ewing.'" Principal also took to other ways of improving her character, such as taking voice lessons to perfect a Texas accent. Fellow actor Patrick Duffy analyzed: