Last year’s Pam & Tommy was yet another hit Hulu limited series, digging up some prime ‘90s tabloid fodder: the dissemination of a sex tape (of sorts) featuring Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee. It even nabbed four Emmy nominations, including one for co-star Lily James, who played Anderson. The British actress tried to reach out to the person she was playing, but Anderson wanted nothing to do with it. Now it appears Anderson’s enmity for the series is even more intense than it seemed.
In a new New York Times profile (in a bit teased out by The Hollywood Reporter), Anderson reveals that James had sent her a handwritten letter in which she professed her respect for her and her wish to honor her. A scanned version of that letter, Anderson told NYT, sits somewhere in her inbox. It remains to this day unread.
Anderson wasn’t buying claims that the series was anything but more exploitation.
“It was already hurtful enough the first time,” Anderson said. “It’s like one of those things where you’re going, ‘Really?’ People are still capitalizing off that thing?”
The makers of Pam & Tommy have previously addressed Anderson’s refusal to get involved or even to give them her blessing. Producer Robert Siegel said that after she’d “chosen not to engage” with them, they “respected her desire not to be involved.”
In the meantime, Anderson has been opening up about the incident Pam & Tommy chronicles. She’s releasing her own memoir, Love, Pamela, and she’s done new interviews, in which she says she’s never watched the notorious tape. She’s also the subject of a Netflix documentary, Pamela, a love story. In the latter’s trailer, she addresses the series. “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 the narrative for the first time,” she can be heard saying. “Why can’t we be the heroes of our own life story?”