We're Learning So Much From Pamela Anderson's New Memoir

Having already teased her new memoir and its corresponding Netflix docuseries early last year, Anderson's answer to Hulu's much-buzzed-about limited series Pam & Tommy has finally arrived. and the new tell-all is definitely living up to the hype. Covering everything from childhood trauma to her various high-profile relationships, Anderson's new memoir, Love, Pamela, is offering us new insight into the star's highly publicized life and generating a slew of ChatGPT-esque tabloid headlines in its wake.

From watching the 2008 Obama inauguration on a blown-up mattress with Vivienne Westwood and Jurgen Teller to the time she found a crack pipe hidden in a Christmas tree by ex-husband Rick Salomon, the book is apparently rife with plenty of interesting anecdotes and celeb-riddled run-ins interspersed between bits of prose and free verse poetry. There are plenty of references to a variety of intellectual, literary and artistic influences ranging from James Baldwin to Angela Davis, Che Guevara, Diego Rivera, Ed Ruscha, Jungian psychoanalysts and more.

​Among some of the notable takeaways include Anderson's account of her relationship with Kid Rock, who had a pointed dislike of photographer David LaChapelle, not believing he "was really gay." The two were on the verge of moving in together until the romance came to a spectacular end at the premiere of Borat. Up until that point, Anderson had hidden her role from the rock star, which sees Sacha Baron Cohen's titular character hatch a plot to abduct the actress at a book signing in a ploy to get her to marry him.

“I forgot about the part in the film that referenced the ‘sex tape,’" Anderson writes. "Bob [Kid Rock] stormed out, calling me a whore and worse. He was embarrassed, and his reaction was not thought through... After I chased Bob to his car, he peeled out, leaving me there alone. I turned back and apologized, then asked if anyone could give me a ride home. When I walked in, Bob was smashing a photo on the wall. He said he was sick of waking up to a picture of me and David LaChapelle every day. But it wasn’t me and David — it was Marilyn Monroe and Bert Stern.”

Elsewhere in the memoir, Anderson remembers the early days of her whirlwind romance with Tommy Lee, admitting that she barely knew the Mötley Crüe drummer's name when they eloped in Mexico in 1995. “On the flight home, I asked him what our last name was, and he said, ‘Lee,'” she writes. “I said, ‘Oh, I thought it was Tommy Lee... something. Jones?'”

As we all know, the honeymoon phase would, unfortunately, turn out to be short-lived, with their marriage being marred by numerous accounts of physical abuse, substance abuse, a suicide attempt involving vodka and a bottle of Advil, Lee's 1998 arrest and an infamous leaked sex tape. Anderson recently opened up about the trauma of having to revisit the sex tape in the trailer for her new Netflix series. “I blocked that stolen tape out of my life in order to survive, and now that it’s all coming up again, I feel sick,” she says, though she's clear to point out that she's "not the damsel in distress."

"I put myself in crazy situations and (laughs) survived them," Anderson said. "Why can’t we be the heroes of our own life story?"

Pamela Anderson's new memoir, Love, Pamela, and Netflix series, Pamela, a love story, are both out now.

Photo via Getty/ FRANCOIS GUILLOT/ AFP