Pamela Anderson talks about the ‘therapy’ of telling her own story after ‘Pam & Tommy’ miniseries

Last year, the Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy, which dramatized the whirlwind relationship between Canadian bombshell beauty Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee, was a runaway hit. The show’s focal point was the theft of their personal home video, the first celebrity sex tape to leak onto the internet, and the subsequent fallout.

It’s always struck us as rather interesting that Pamela herself wanted no part in the miniseries and condemned it, telling The New York Times, “It was already hurtful enough the first time. It’s like one of those things where you’re going, ‘Really?’ People are still capitalizing off that thing?”

Now, the Baywatch beauty has a forthcoming memoir and documentary on the horizon, told in her own words. She reveals that the renewed public interest in her stolen video made her therapeutically find her voice.

Speaking with People, the Barb Wire star, who was born and raised in British Columbia, says that the past year has brought up anger she didn’t know she had. “[There's] a little bit of anxiety before [the memoir] comes out because this has been a year, basically, of therapy, going through my life from my first memory to my last memory,” she told the outlet. 

"I had no idea how much anger I had inside or how therapeutic it was going to be for not just me, but for people around me, like my mother," she continued. "It's been a healing process. I'm so happy to share it, and hopefully, people will be inspired."

In the trailer for her new Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, which drops on January 31, she says in voiceover, “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. I want to take control of the narrative for the first time.”

“Why can’t we be the heroes of our own life story?”

Her memoir, Love Pamela, which drops on the same day as the documentary, was a labour of love, and she is proud to defy expectations, having written the entire tome herself without a ghostwriter. “I'm really proud of it. It is something I wrote every word of. I didn't have a collaborator. I didn't have any ghostwriter, nothing."

"It's just one girl's story of how I made it through: a small-town girl going to Los Angeles and just going through all the wild and crazy adventures I did and then circling back and going home," she told People.

According to her, it was her two sons, Brandon and Dylan, whom she shares with her ex-husband Tommy Lee, who encouraged her to tell her story in her own words.

“Brandon can talk me into anything with his sincere heart and a fierceness that only a son could have,” she told Vanity Fair via e-mail. “He wanted to tell my story authentically and without distortion.”

Speaking with People, she added, "My boys were excited for me to write my own book, but they both were like, 'Mom, you're going to need help to write this book.' And I said, 'No, I can write this book myself.' They were shocked that I pulled this off,” 

"I just wanted there to be a true, authentic, real record of my life," she added. "I really felt like it was very, very important for me to write it all down, from beginning to end."

In a recent New York Times interview, the Borat star revealed that, despite attempts from the Pam & Tommy creators to have her involved, she hasn’t read their letters – most specifically, a letter from the miniseries star, Lily James, who transformed into the 90s icon for the part. Pamela told the outlet she received the handwritten letter but refused to read it, and to this day, “a scanned copy of that letter still sits in Ms. Anderson’s inbox somewhere, unread.”