After 6 marriages, I’m still in love with my ex-husband, says Pamela Anderson ahead of Netflix doc about life
SHE suffered in silence when her shocking sex tape ordeal was dramatised in the hit streaming series Pam & Tommy.
Now former Baywatch legend Pamela Anderson is set to blow the lid on her own personal life, as she makes 2023 the year people get to know “the real me”.
The actress and model, 55, is releasing a highly personal docu- mentary this month along with a painfully frank memoir that will recount her six failed marriages, two of which were annulled.
And she reveals it was her two grown-up children she had with rock star Tommy Lee who convinced her to open-up about her wild past.
She says her businessmen sons Brandon, 26, and Dylan Lee, 25, argued it was time to set the record straight after they started their own production company to make Pamela, A Love Story.
Pamela said: “Sharing my story, first of all, is exciting. My kids are producing the Netflix documentary and the memoirs are really therapeutic because I was writing over the last year and I’m writing my own book, not with a collaborator or anything.
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“There might need to be subtitles, the publisher said.
“But it is me speaking and I have my own way of writing, which is not perfect, it’s imperfect, like me, but it’s very intimate and honest.”
In a series of interviews she described her sons as “my biggest cheerleaders”, adding: “I didn’t really want to drag them into this world but now that they are older and have their own businesses.
“They were like, ‘Mum this is it, we are going to protect you. This is our empire and people are going to get to know the real you, not just how they think they know you’.”
Reputation destroyed
Pamela was deeply upset by the Pam & Tommy series, in which she was played by English actress Lily James — who turned herself into the Playboy pin-up by wearing artificial boobs — with actor Sebastian Stan as her Mötley Crüe drummer ex-husband in the Disney+ series.
The drama portrayed her as an ambitious star with an outlandish personal life who feared her reputation would be destroyed by the release of their explicit sex tape in 1996 after it was taken from their home.
Particularly upsetting was that the TV series not only showed the robbery at Tommy’s Malibu mansion, when the videotape was stolen from his garage, but also recreated them making love on a speedboat on their honeymoon.
The sex tape, which they had recorded the previous year, was never intended to be made public.
Pamela bit her tongue until the final episode last year, when she released a handwritten statement on her Instagram account, saying: “My life. A thousand imperfections. A million misperceptions.
“Wicked, wild and lost. Nothing to live up to. I can only surprise you. Not a victim, but a survivor. And alive to tell the real story.”
The mother of two has decided that now is the time to give a warts-and-all account of what really happened.
Her new documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, will be released on January 31 and will follow hot on the heels of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s controversial Netflix documentary, which set viewing records.
The initial trailers suggest Pammie will not only discuss her high-profile marriages with drummer Tommy, 60, who she tied the knot with in 1995 and divorced in 1998, and fellow rocker Kid Rock, 51, who she was married to for four months in 2006, before they filed for a divorce.
It will also delve into her more recent doomed romances with producer Jon Peters, 77, in 2020 (their marriage was annulled after 12 days) and with bodyguard Dan Hayhurst the same year which ended in divorce last year.
The image went viral around the world.
Hollywood producers flew her to LA and asked her to choose between a role as CJ Parker on the new Baywatch series, about lifeguards on a Californian beach, and the much-loved Home Improvement sitcom.
After the role was announced — at the same time as Baywatch celebrated its 30th anniversary — she said: “It’s good timing because my kids are grown and it’s time.
"I need a challenge and I needed this. I’ve been gone for a little while and now I’m back. I like this feeling, that dangerous, crazy feeling that you can’t do something and then you surprise yourself.
“You don’t know what you are capable of until you try it. So that’s what I’m really curious about, because what can I do?
“I haven’t really applied myself to much in life aside from my children and my . . . anyway.
“Ten years ago they asked me to do this role and I said no because my kids were too small.
“I really needed it at this time in my life so the stars are aligning for sure. And this is for me.
"This is one decision I made for myself so it’s different. One thing I’ve realised recently is that I’ve always been willing to change — and I enjoy taking on a persona — but now I need to be more of me.
“When you believe in yourself other people believe in you too. That’s a cliched thing to say but as soon as I decided I’m good enough then all this stuff started happening and now I feel like I’m in the right place.”
She added: “People have asked me to be more like Pamela Anderson and I’m a real person, you are talking to a real person.
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“Everyone thinks I’m this wild and crazy person, which I am but, like, how would they know?
“I feel that sometimes when you become a caricature and cartoon and you don’t live up to people’s expectations you have to play this role. That’s my experience.”