Deadline
The words “Pamela Anderson” and “sex tape” may forever remain synonymous. But one of the revelations of the Netflix documentary Pamela, a love storyis that Anderson herself has long since overcome the scandal that erupted in the mid-1990s after a home video of her having sex with her then-husband, Mötley Crüe rocker Tommy Lee, was leaked.
“She’s the kind of person who lives in the moment, in the present time,” director Ryan White said during an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted virtual event. “Of course, I had all these conversations with her, asking her to think about the past – which she was willing to do. But she doesn’t spend much of her life thinking about what could have been or what happened to her, what her career could have been without those things. It’s just that Pamela Anderson’s brain doesn’t really work that way.”
White, the award-winning director of Good night Opie and other documentaries that recorded numerous interviews with Anderson at her boathouse in British Columbia. He says his biggest surprise was discovering “how much fun she is. … I am a person who prides himself on being quick with a sense of humor. I’m still having a hard time keeping up with Pamela. … She is so cute—more than cute. I know I personally didn’t expect that … but I don’t think the audience necessarily expected that either.”
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White said Anderson’s two children with Lee, Brandon and Dylan, wanted their mother to make the documentary. Once on board, she didn’t hold back, sharing diaries and other personal archival material and discussing sexual abuse and sexual abuse she suffered as a girl.
“While I was there, we talked about a lot of hard things. She was like, “Please, Ryan, whatever [you do], don’t let this be a sob story … because I don’t see my life as a sob story,” he recalled. “I think her worst nightmare would be me making a movie that paints her as a victim. Even in some of the most difficult moments of her life, Pamela is real to them.”
Check back on Monday for the video of the panel.