Less than a year after Pam and Tommy on Hulu turned the theft of the titular couple’s sex tape into a caper drama, the biggest skeptic of this show, Pamela Anderson herself, is restoring coverage of her legendary career in a big way thanks to the simultaneous releases of her Netflix. a documentary and her autobiographical memoirs. The actress and model has been at the center of a lot of high-profile headlines so far, as she claimed that Tim Allen showed her his penis on the set of “Home Improvement”, and paraphrased past statements that Sylvester Stallone tried to win her favor with a car and more. Now she’s shared a possibly unexpected look at one of her first employers, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.
Given her not very juicy statements about the aforementioned Hollywood stars and other people, one might think that Pamela Anderson will become a key source of equally obscene stories about the sex-absorbed boss of Playboy magazine Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017 at the age of 91. On the contrary, in an interview with The Times of London (opens in new tab), a veteran of the Malibu Rescuers called Hefner the only person in her career who could be counted on not to treat her the same way the rest of the world did at the time. And how did he treat her?
[With] full and absolute respect.
To be sure, Hugh Hefner has certainly been at the center of many stories and allegations that portray him in a less positive light, especially when it came to sex parties at the Playboy mansion. But Pamela Anderson almost always spoke quite highly of Hef, both before and after his death, paying tribute to him for helping launch her into orbit with her photo shoots for the magazine, and her ascent to Playmate was a very stimulating factor.
In addition, Anderson talked about how much her first appearance in Playboy affected her attitude and feelings about herself at that time, saying:
I was painfully shy, and I hated that feeling. That’s why I did it. I just didn’t want that feeling anymore. This first photo shoot gave me a kind of portal about what it means to be a sensual woman. My sexuality was mine. I have regained my strength.
The barbed wire star is definitely not alone in this regard: many models over the years have credited Playboy and Hugh Hefner with inspiring a sense of self-love and self-confidence. It’s possible that Anderson could have achieved a similar career arc if NSFW publication hadn’t made her the object of lustful affection, but we’ll never know what that reality would have been like.
Check out the trailer for the Netflix documentary about Pam Anderson below to take a look at what her real reality was between those hectic early years and now.
“Pamela, a Love Story” will be available for everyone with a Netflix subscription to watch when it goes live on Tuesday, January 31, the same day her long-awaited memoir “With Love, Pamela” is released. While you’re waiting to learn more about Anderson’s troubled and problematic ascent to icon status, take a look at our 2023 TV premiere schedule to find out what other projects are debuting in the near future.
