Stranger than fiction. Pam & Tommy is a fictionalized model of a real-life scandal that engulfed Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee within the Nineties, however the fact behind the collection is stuffed with unbelievable twists and turns.
The story started in early 1995 when the Mötley Crüe drummer and the Baywatch star tied the knot after figuring out one another for 96 hours. Shortly after their wedding ceremony, the duo took a trip to Lake Mead, situated on the border of Arizona and Nevada. During the journey, the couple recorded a intercourse tape for his or her personal use.
“We weren’t trying to make a porno, just to document our vacation,” Lee stated later. “We watched it once when we returned home, then put it in our safe, a 500-pound monstrosity, hidden underneath a carpet in my studio control room in the garage.”
That might need been the tip of it, if not for an electrician named Rand Gauthier. After the newlyweds returned residence to California, they employed builders to renovate their home in Malibu. Lee was sad with the outcomes and fired the employees, which didn’t sit effectively with Gauthier. He spent the remainder of 1995 planning his revenge.
While the Methods of Mayhem frontman and his spouse had been away in November 1995, Gauthier broke into their home and eliminated the secure, which contained weapons, jewellery and a mysterious VHS tape.
“We put it in and see what it is, and of course, cha-ching,” Gauthier advised Rolling Stone in 2014. “The dollar signs fly before our eyes. But we’re going, this is the kind of thing people will get killed over.”
After noticing the secure was lacking in January 1996, Lee and Anderson filed a police report, however by that time it was too late. Gauthier labored with Milton “Uncle Miltie” Ingley to distribute the tape, which rapidly grew to become accessible by way of bootleg copies.
The Barb Wire actress and the musician filed a $10 million lawsuit to halt distribution of the video, however the swimsuit was later dropped — after hundreds of individuals had already seen it. Lee and Anderson, who share sons Brandon and Dylan, divorced in 1998.
Nearly 20 years later, Anderson claimed that she’d “never seen” the tape. “I made not one dollar,” she stated throughout a 2015 look on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “It was stolen property. We made a deal to stop all the shenanigans.”
In February 2022, Hulu launched the restricted collection Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan within the title roles. The Downton Abbey alum claimed she tried to contact Anderson earlier than enjoying her, however the activist by no means took her calls.
“I was really hopeful that she would be involved. I wish it had been different,” James advised Net-a-Porter’s Porter in January 2022. “My sole intention was to take care of the story and to play Pamela authentically.”
Keep scrolling to see what Pam & Tommy‘s main gamers have been as much as because the scandal:
