In Pamela, A Love Story, Anderson opens up after last year’s Pam & Tommy, a series the actress hated and viewed as an invasion of privacy. The documentary gives viewers insight into the Baywatch superstar’s struggles and tragedies, and her search for purpose and love. The documentary covers many of the traumatic events of her adolescence, including sexual assault and rape, her marriages, a miscarriage, her life as a Playboy model, one of America’s most recognizable celebrities of the 1990s, and her second act on Broadway.
Pamela, A Love Story
Will Pamela, A Love Story heal wounds after Pam and Tommy?
Last February, Hulu debuted a limited series called Pam & Tommy, 26 years after the sex video incident. Avengers Endgame’s Sebastian Stan and Lily James were featured in the drama, which was based on the events surrounding Pamela and Tommy’s love affair, the sex tape, and their rollercoaster relationship. When the show first came out, a source close to Pam told ET that the event was “traumatic” for her.
“I feel sick [just thinking about Pam & Tommy],” says Anderson in Pamela, A Love Story.
The Pam & Tommy Hulu series has been excruciatingly unpleasant for Anderson and anybody who cares for her. “It’s astonishing that this series is permitted to air without her permission,” a source close to her said.
Pamela and Netflix announced her documentary on March 2, 2022, after the premiere of Pam & Tommy, “My life: a thousand imperfections, a million misconceptions,” her note read, along with a red lipstick kiss stain. “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.” Pamela said she intended to “take control of the narrative for the first time.”
She also revealed the release date of her memoir, Love, Pamela, on October 5, 2022. “I repainted scenes in detail if it were my childhood or the Playboy Mansion. Just one girl’s messy existence, a celebration – of imperfections. The book is an unpolished attempt. I had no co-writer. My life – as a mother, an activist, and an actress. I am so proud of this book. XO Pamela,” she wrote on the book cover via Instagram.
What is Pamela A Love story about?
Ryan White billed Pamela, A Love Story, as an “intimate and humanizing depiction of one of the world’s most renowned blonde bombshells,” chronicling “the arc of Anderson’s life and profession from small-town girl to international sex symbol, actor, activist, and doting mother.”
Pamela’s love life narrative
Pamela Anderson’s love life has been widely publicized, with her most private moments aired to the whole world. Her romantic life has been up and down, with more twists and turns than a mountain peak ascent; though Pamela maintains she remains a hopeless romantic.
The film also explores her marriages to Tommy Lee, Kid Rock, Rick Salomon, Jon Peters, and Dan Hayhurst.
So who is Pamela Anderson’s true love?
That one’s easy. Tommy Lee; the Netflix documentary makes that much clear. Pamela Anderson married Tommy Lee in February 1995 after knowing him for just four days. However, after having two children with the former Motley Crue Drummer, Lee was arrested for kicking Anderson as she was holding their son, for which he was eventually jailed for six months. Anderson filed for divorce from Lee in early 1998, only months after their second son, Dylan, was born in December 1997.
The two were married for almost three years before reuniting and had an on-again, off-again romance for over a decade before calling it quits in 2008. For years, Pamela has claimed that Tommy Lee is the only guy she has ever genuinely loved.
However, Anderson claims in the film that she’s likely destined to be alone as she can neither love anyone as intensely as Lee nor be with him.
Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson
Pamela Anderson’s presence in Borat—and Kid Rock’s resentment over it—played a role in her divorce from the Detroit megastar. In a 2023 interview, she told Howard Stern that she knew her marriage to Kid Rock would fail “immediately when she got married.”
After years of friendship, Pamela Anderson later married Rick Salomon in 2006. However, they divorced after a few months, with Anderson claiming she left him because she discovered a crack pipe in their Christmas tree (an allegation he denied). In late 2013, they reconciled and remarried. Six months later, they parted again, this time for good, and their divorce was finalized in 2015.
On that note, if we have one complaint about the film, while it is terrific Anderson gets this empowering moment in a pretty solid documentary, it’s that she does to Rick Salomon what she hates the showrunners at Hulu for doing to her; airing dirty laundry that seems unnecessary. Did Rick Salomon give her permission to talk about the alleged crack pipe incident?
But we digress.
Pamela Anderson and her fourth husband
Pamela Anderson and her fourth husband, Dayn Hayhurst, divorced early in the COVID-19 pandemic days of 2020. According to a source at Entertainment Tonight, “After living together during the epidemic, Pamela and Dan drifted apart. Pamela began to discover everything she could about Dan, for better or worse. She had fallen out of love, and Dan was not the man she believed he was.”
Pamela Anderson later married producer Jon Peters, a longtime friend, in a surprise Malibu wedding in January 2020. They divorced 12 days later, but remain in love—so much so that Peters has allegedly left Anderson in his will.
The film is not an in-depth retrospect procedural attempting to piece together a new persona for Pamela Anderson. She is who she is. Rather, it represents her willingness to convey her true self, past and present, whether we see her lazing around the house or rocking a crowd on Broadway.
Unfortunately, as clean as the documentary is, it ends a bit unsatisfactorily, as Pamela, convinced she can never love anyone like Tommy Lee, appears to adopt this new reality, “my kids are grown, I’m all alone, I may always be alone.”
Pamela, A Love Story is now available on Netflix. Give it a stream this weekend, she deserves that much.