Pamela Anderson Is Still Reinventing Herself
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is Pamela Anderson. She stars in the new film The Last Showgirl, where she plays Shelly, a veteran performer from Las Vegas who learns that her show is shutting down after a 30-year run. At 57, Shelley must grapple with the sacrifices she's made in her personal life for the benefit of her career, including her relationship with her daughter, played by Billie Lourd. The Last Showgirl was directed by Gia Coppola and also stars Jamie Lee Curtis, who is almost unrecognizable as a former showgirl and Shelley's best friend. Pamela Anderson became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1980s and 90s. The blockbuster television series Baywatch made her a household name, and the show itself was at one time the most-watched series in the world with over a billion viewers each week, making Anderson the highest-paid actress on television at the time.
International distributors of the show even enacted a Pamela Claus in their contracts, agreeing to purchase only episodes that she was in. But throughout the 2000s, Anderson struggled to make a name for herself outside of that 90s persona until the opportunity for reinvention came with her Broadway debut in 2022 as Roxy Hart in Chicago and the Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, which is a tender and intimate portrait of her life produced by her son Brandon. Pamela Anderson, welcome to Fresh Air. It is such a pleasure to have you here.
Oh, thank you. It's lovely to be here.
You know, Pamela, I'm so fascinated by your journey over the last few years because before this role in The Last Showgirl was presented to you, I read that you had all but moved on from Hollywood. You actually looked at this script, though, and you said, I'm the only one that can do this.
What was it about this script that made you just know? I mean, it was a beautiful story. It had a wonderful character to play. And I just related on many levels. You know, there's many parallels between us, but I also felt like that was a great jumping off point that I could take this opportunity and really transform into this woman. I was craving to do something like this. I really needed to sink my teeth into something. And it came at the right time. And I realized if I had any other life, I couldn't have played Shelley as I did. And it all made sense. I had somewhere to put all my life experience in one way or another. It's in there. Yeah. And we're going to talk about those parallels.
But your your character, Shelley, is part of this Vegas show called La Razzle Dazzle, which actually is based on this real show that was in Vegas for many decades called Jubilee. How would you describe that show?
I mean, I've met with the Jubilee dancers, and they took so much pride in their art form. I love the nostalgia that Shelley always comes back to, that it's about France, you know, it's Lido culture. It's this, you know, it's important. You know, they were treated like movie stars. They are the icon of Las Vegas, even though they don't really exist anymore. It was sad to know that there were 85 women on stage and 45 crew members and about 15 people in the audience at the very end, that it was just something that died out and lost to a new culture of, you know, like the dirty circus, she likes to say, that it took more to entertain. And so these art forms die out and it's about the people that have given their lives to these
art forms that are suffering and coming to a crossroads and having to reinvent themselves. And that really resonated with me. I think it's a story about second chances and about the mother-daughter story and trying to find a way to parent as a single mother in an entertainment industry, of course, is another part that I could really relate to and was really interested in.
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