Yahoo Movies Pamela Anderson says Pam & Tommy series should have asked for her permission
Pamela Anderson is finally ready to tell her own story with her new Netflix documentary Pamela, a love story, and she's not holding back about Hulu's recent limited series Pam & Tommy — which was made without her involvement.
"It really gives me nightmares," Anderson says in the documentary profile (now streaming on Netflix). "I didn't sleep last night, at all. I have no desire to watch it. Not going to watch it. Never watched the tape — I'm not going to watch this. Who knows how they're going to portray it? Nobody really knows what we were going through at that time. They should have had to have my permission."
Netflix
Pam & Tommy stars Lily James as Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Tommy Lee in a comedic take on how the '90s tabloid couple's home video was stolen from a safe by their electrician and sold online as a raunchy sex tape, becoming the first viral video ever. Both James and the producers reached out to Anderson during filming, but despite not getting an answer or blessing from her, the series moved forward because producers had optioned the rights to an article published by Rolling Stone in 2014 that revealed the true story of how the tape was stolen and released.
Anderson is now reclaiming her legacy with a new memoir, Love, Pamela (out now), as well as the Netflix documentary, co-produced by her son Brandon Thomas Lee. In the doc, Anderson gets candid about the months leading up to Pam & Tommy's release. "I texted Tommy the other day and said, 'How do you feel about everything?'" she says in the film. "And he goes, 'Pamela, just don't let it hurt you as much as it did the first time.' To this day, I do not know who stole the tape. I don't want to figure out it. There's no use figuring out anything about it. The damage is done. Why would I want to go through it again?"
"Why bring up something from 20 years ago that you know f---ed someone up?" Anderson's younger son Dylan Jagger Lee says about Pam & Tommy. "The worst part of her life, and making semi-comedy out of it? Didn't really make sense."
The doc also shows footage of Brandon calling Anderson the day after Pam & Tommy debuted. He reveals he watched the first three episodes and was upset at how they portrayed Rand Gauthier (played by Seth Rogen), the man who stole the tape, in a sympathetic light. He also warned Dylan not to watch the series.
"Oh, God, I'm, like, shaking," Anderson says to Brandon over the phone. "I'm just sorry you guys had to go through it. People think, 'Poor Pamela,' but it's poor you, Dylan, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa — yeah, this is a big conversation."
"I blocked that out of my life — I had to, in order to survive," she says later in the doc. "It was a survival mechanism, and now that it's all coming up again, I feel sick. My whole stomach feels right now like it's been punched. I don't feel good right now."
"This feels like when the tape was stolen," she adds. "Basically, you are just a thing owned by the world, you belong to the world. Just ignore them, let it go."
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