Mike Hosking talks to Pamela Anderson about the documentary, her family and her life at 55.
Video / Newstalk ZB
Pamela Anderson has been many things: a sex symbol, an actress, a five-time divorcee, a mother and the victim of a sex tape scandal. But as she joins Mike Hosking on his ZB Breakfast show this morning to discuss her new memoir Love, Pamela andher Netflix documentary Pamela A Love Story.
She says at 55 years of age, single and living in the remote village on Vancouver Island where she grew up, she’s relieved.
“This is such a big relief. It’s something my kids talked me into doing,” she says of sons Brandon and Dylan who she had with former husband Tommy Lee.
“They said, ‘Mum, nobody knows your story.’ And I never thought I was going to get to do it because I always felt like an observer, looking at somebody else’s life.”
But with her sons’ encouragement, the former Baywatch star decided “it was time,” says Anderson of the decision to finally tell her story, via Netflix, and her memoir, Love Pamela, bothcandid portrayals of a woman reflecting on the wild ride that has been her life.
“I said, ‘film it, I don’t care. I’m just going to take everything off and I want to go through this journey with people and and if you like me at my worst you can like me at my best’,” she says of her decision to be shot makeup free and with seemingly little to no scripting.
The 55-year-old tells Hosking the result, which draws on her childhood diaries and an extensive record of her love affair with Tommy Lee via stacks of old VHS tapes, has been cathartic. She says she’s in a “liberating” stage in her life.
“This is the sexiest time of my life, the most romantic time in my life. I have my bath full of rose petals and I light candles and make beautiful meals and the capacity to be alone … to love you have to be able to know how to be alone and love yourself. So it may have taken me a while but that’s where I’m at right now.”
Hosking points to footage where the likes of talk show heavyweights David Letterman and Jay Leno showed no hesitation in discussing Anderson’s breast implants and asks: “Do you think, in a sense, you came along at the wrong time? Because if you’d come along today there is no way in the world they would have got away with the way they treated you.”
But Anderson says it was all part of her journey.
“Then I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now. I wouldn’t be able to write a book ... I feel like everything kind of happened for a reason and I don’t feel like a victim at all. I feel like I’ve had this really incredible opportunity now ... I just had to get through it and be stronger for it and I’m really happy that things have changed.”
Anderson was always a bit of an open book in interviews. No one ever told her not to be, or that because she talked about some things, she didn’t have to talk about everything. She didn’t know that she could draw her own line in the sand if a question made her feel uncomfortable.
And so she answered all manner of questions about her breasts, her body, her image, her boyfriends — partially because she was gracious and self-deprecating, partially because her body was, in some ways, her meal ticket and partially because the people asking these questions were more often than not respected journalists working for respected outlets.
From the moment that audience camera zoomed in on her in the Labatt T-shirt at a Canadian football game in 1989, the image of Pamela Anderson was, essentially, no longer her own. It belonged to everyone else.
By the time private home videos showing her and husband Tommy Lee having sex were stolen, reproduced and distributed for sale globally, no one seemed all that horrified on her behalf. They couldn’t even fake it when speaking to her. She wasn’t a person; she was just an object. And then, in some ways, it was done all over again many years later when the Hulu series Pam & Tommy was made without her involvement or consent.
Pamela, a Love Story, a new documentary from filmmaker Ryan White, gives Anderson the chance to tell her story her own way, from her earliest days to her Playboy debut, her Baywatch fame, her many marriages and up through her recent run on Broadway. She is still that open book, disarmingly funny and candid and uncynical, sitting there beautifully makeup free, letting the filmmakers and audience peer into her soul through many pages of journals going back to her childhood. It is a captivating watch, especially for those who never thought much about her at all.
Anderson’s life was and is immensely complex. Her parents’ relationship was volatile and sometimes violent. They lived on welfare for a time and she still remembers the taste of the powdered milk. She had a female babysitter who molested her for years. At age 12 she was raped by a 25-year-old. She learned early to leave her body and make her own little world, she says, and she knew from a young age that she had to get off of that island.
Like many women before and after her, Anderson didn’t feel beautiful growing up and after the sexual trauma, her body was a source of secret shame. Ironic that it was her body that would be her ticket out, ultimately. But modelling felt like playing a character, she said. Even when mostly nude, it didn’t feel like herself. Sometimes it was even fun.
There is a breeziness to Anderson, who, despite everything, does not think of herself as a victim. She doesn’t regret marrying Tommy Lee after four days of knowing him — her account of the quick courtship is quite amusing. At a certain point, though sick of always having to talk about her breasts, she used her image for a cause she cared about: Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). She even sat through a roast under the condition that a sizable donation be made to the organisation. She is a hopeful romantic who is hard not to cheer for.
This image released by Netflix shows Pamela Anderson, right, and her son Brandon Thomas Lee in a scene from the documentary "Pamela, A Love Story". Photo / Netflix via AP
She has made peace with many things, some simply by refusing to dwell, but one thing that still stings is the tape — such a clear violation of her privacy that you wonder what sort of culture and legal system would allow it to get as out of control as it did. That a series would attempt to make entertainment out of it just reopened old wounds and traumas. For Anderson, it was another group of people making money off what her son calls the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.
As this documentary reminds, Anderson is still right here. She’s not some distant, deceased figure who needs to be speculated about or saved by miniseries. You can just ask her how she felt about it then and she’ll tell you.
At 54 she’s moved on and has surprises yet, including a well-received Broadway run as Roxie Hart in Chicago.
Nowadays would have been a canny choice for a closing montage for a documentary like this, but hearing it in Anderson’s perfectly imperfect voice is simply revelatory.
