Ryan White, the director of the Netflix documentary Pamela Anderson, says she’s nothing but honest.
Ahead of the release of Pamela, A love story on January 31 – the same day her memoirs, Love, Pamela, comes out – some of the anecdotes she shares in the projects have leaked and made headlines. This week Tim Allen denied a story Anderson tells in her book (“never happened”) about how he flashed her on her first day on the show. Home improvement in 1991 after he told her it was only fair because he had seen her naked Playboy. Anderson doubled down in response, saying it’s a “true story” and that she meant “no ill will” towards Allen by telling it, but illustrated “awkward situations” she’s faced throughout her career. Soon after, Sylvester Stallone called it “not true at all” that he offered her an apartment and a Porsche and asked her to be his No. 1 girl at the time. (She’s told the Stallone story before, in 2018, with an outlet noting at the time that his rep didn’t respond to the request for comment.)
Pamela, A love story director White tells Yahoo Entertainment he is“I’m not surprised people are denying things” as the projects release date approaches. However, “What I’m saying is: Pamela is honest. She lives her life in the most honest way I’ve ever seen. Her North Star is honesty – a flaw. I guess she just can’t be dishonest… So I’d bet my money on anything Pamela Anderson ever says.”
White has spent time together creating the doc, including at her home in Ladysmith, British Columbia, where she moved to in 2020. White adds that Anderson “doesn’t do things to get attention. She doesn’t do things to make money,” famously turning down a $5 million deal after her home video featuring Tommy Lee was stolen and sold as a sex tape, without ever having to earn money. “Pamela has never been a chess player when it comes to fame or money. It’s just not interesting to her. However, she really wants to live authentically, aloud, [and] encourages that – and honesty – in everyone.”
White reveals that there were many other possible headlines that he left out of the document.
“So every single anecdote she’s ever told me — and there are so many good ones that would be clickbait that I just didn’t include in the movie because they didn’t serve the bigger story of my movie — I believe every anecdote has them,” he says. .
For the project, produced by Anderson’s oldest son Brandon Thomas Lee, the Baywatch alum, 55, passed on her diaries and her entire personal video archive. White and his team rented a van to get everything from Vancouver Island, Canada, back to Los Angeles. His team “read every diary and looked at every minute of footage Pamela has ever taken in her life to look for these diamonds in the rough.”
The Doctor uses the videos and her words, as well as new interviews with her, to tell the story of growing up in Canada in a household with young parents who fought a lot and broke up. She was sexually abused by a babysitter as a child and later raped when she was 12. It takes viewers on her journey to stardom, posing for Playboy becoming a global TV superstar for the first time and beyond in that famous red swimsuit. Anderson – sometimes in interviews without makeup in a bathrobe in her modest living room – recounts the highs and lows of her love story first with Tommy Lee, as well as later marriages, and shares what she’s learned now that she’s 55 and single, living in the house her grandparents once owned.
Pamela, A love story releases Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET on Netflix. her memoirs, Love, Pamelagoes on sale the same day.
