Getty Pamela Anderson.
Former “Dancing With the Stars” co-host Erin Andrews said she was deeply affected by Pamela Anderson’s documentary, “Pamela, A Love Story.” The Netflix film detailed the former “Baywatch” star’s life story and addressed her famous stolen sex tape scandal with her ex-husband, Tommy Lee, which took place in the early days of the Internet in the mid-1990s.
While speaking on her “Calm Down” podcast in February 2023, Andrews revealed that Anderson’s story “touched” her due to her own experience with video voyeurism.
“I had never heard her speak about the violation and the invasion of privacy that it was,” Andrews told her podcast co-host Charissa Thompson. “And one line that resonated with me, because I know you and I both deal with PTSD from this, was that she said ‘This had never been dealt with before. No one had ever seen it.’”
Andrews reflected on the “toll” the experience took on Anderson’s career and relationships, and how it was rehashed in 2022 with the Hulu series “Pam & Tommy,” a project that Anderson refused to participate in.
“So many times, she was ‘I don’t feel good’… which is how I feel a lot of times. I just never heard her to articulate it that way before, and my heart went out to her,” Andrews said of Anderson.
Erin Andrews Was the Victim of a Stalker Who Filmed Her Undressing in a Hotel Room
GettyNASHVILLE, TN – MARCH 03: (L-R) Attorney Scott Carr and sportscaster Erin Andrews leave the courtroom on March 4, 2016, in Nashville, Tennessee.
In September 2008, Andrews was in Nashville to cover a football game for ESPN when a Marriot Hotel employee granted a male guest’s request to stay in the room next to her room. The man, Michael David Barrett, ultimately filmed Andrews undressing through peepholes in the door that he removed. Nearly five minutes of footage of the nude sideline reporter was posted online, per Deadline.
Andrews later revealed she was further humiliated by allegations that the leaked video was a PR stunt.
While hotel owner West End Hotel Partners claimed that the incident helped Andrews’ career thrive, the “Dancing with the Stars” co-host was ultimately awarded $55 million in the subsequent trial. Barrett was sentenced to 30 months in jail, per ABC News.
According to People, at the trial, a psychologist testified that Andrews suffers from mild post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of the stalker’s unauthorized videotaping.
Pamela Anderson Was ‘Re-Traumatized’ by Her Documentary & Hulu’s ‘Pam & Tommy’ Series
In 1995, Anderson and Lee’s honeymoon sex tape was stolen from a safe in their garage. Copies of the tape were sold illegally on the Internet. According to Entertainment Weekly, in 1998 the couple sued Internet Entertainment Group for copyright infringement and won a $1.5 million judgment against the now-defunct company. Anderson has said she never made a dime from the tape and has never watched it.
The scandal destroyed the actress’s marriage and career, and she was devastated when it was all rehashed in the 2022 Hulu series “Pam & Tommy.” Ryan White, the director of the “Love, Pamela” documentary, told Newsweek that the resurfaced story re-traumatized the actress.
“She has spent the last 20-something years getting over that trauma of that tape being stolen from her,” he said. “And then to have a bubble back up while we were making the film—because we were making the film before ‘Pam & Tommy’ was ever a thing, we didn’t even know that was going to be a show—[and we] watch her go through that again, watching her go through a re-trauma, of having to relive something that she had desperately tried to move on from.”
White added that he hopes that when people watch the documentary they will be “a little bit more sensitive” to Anderson’s situation. “I think to watch an individual and see how that impacts them on a day-to-day emotional, gut level,” White said. “I hope it’s very humanizing for people about Pamela.”