In this episode, Amanda Chicago Lewis discusses her investigative reporting career, including her work uncovering the theft of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's sex tape, which later became the basis for a Hulu series. She emphasizes how the public's portrayal of Pamela Anderson as a "villain" for the tape was incorrect. The discussion with Vanessa also touches on the broader impact of celebrity sex tapes, including the recent news involving Kevin Blatt and Kanye West. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Infamous show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. To connect with Infamous's creative team, plus access behind the scenes content, join the community at Campsidemedia.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Amanda Chicago Lewis and what did she uncover about Pam and Tommy's sex tape?
We're here today with Amanda Chicago-Lewis, who is an investigative reporter and an amazing human being and also covers a lot of things that are quite infamous and has in her career. She is well known as the person who tracked down the guy who stole the Pam and Tommy car. sex tape. And the Hulu series, if you watched it, was actually based on her Rolling Stone article about that.
Chapter 2: What role did Kevin Blatt play in the celebrity sex tape industry?
So we are going to be talking about sex tapes quite a bit in this episode, and particularly an article that she also wrote for Wired in 2021 about a guy named Kevin Blatt, a celebrity sex tape broker who she also called the Forrest Gump of 21st century scandal in that article.
And he is recently in the news for threatening Kanye West to potentially release Kanye West's sex tape that apparently he was working with Kanye to keep quiet. So it's a sleaze fest. We're excited to get into it. Thank you so much, Amanda, for being here.
Thanks for having me and thanks for saying so many kind words.
Yeah, I'm glad you didn't take offense to being a purveyor of analysis of sleaze.
Oh my gosh. I hope that on my tombstone it says something about like resuscitated Pamela Anderson's career. Though she really did that herself, but I did have a role.
I mean, she's... you know a beacon of light she's she's a lovely human being through and through she's an optimistic glass half full person and i'm glad that she's having a renaissance and coming out without her makeup on i mean it is a bit sad that like the only middle-aged woman who can go out without her makeup on is the woman who we all agree was like the hottest one from the 80s
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Chapter 3: How did Pamela Anderson become a victim in the media?
So thereby she still looks great. You know, obviously her documentary that she made about was really good, really, really good, really, really honest, you know, mostly. And I think that the story that you wrote and what you uncovered about her sex tape. It's become a bit of a trope to be like, oh, she was a villain back then. And she was just supposed to be a sex crazed hoe.
And now we think that she was actually a victim. But in this case, Pamela Anderson was truly a victim.
She would not want you to say that. Okay. Well, tell me about it. When I went back, this was in 2014, and I read all of the media coverage of Pamela Anderson from the very beginning of her career. She's just unapologetically herself at all moments. They're like, oh, how many men have you slept with? And she's like, five. I remember that because I think she was 27 when she said that.
And I was 27 when I was reading that. And I was like, you've only slept with five men? Really?
You? Pamela Anderson?
she was just a normal comfortable happy woman but the thing with the sex tape is that it was literally stolen from their house which now i think people know and i'm i'm very grateful that that information has made it to the masses because certainly when i was reporting the story the
narrative publicly and what I had believed was that they put it out themselves for publicity to get attention and not that sort of a parallel thing was everyone was desperate for making money off of their image and getting in on their success and their fame and that force is what drove the popularity of the sex tape and the safe to be stolen essentially in the first place. So totally. It's yeah.
Anyway, so I think like people just people are so we're so mean to her. And I think it's not that she's a victim, but it's that what the public believed was wrong and made her look really bad when in fact there was no reason for that.
Right. She was a woman with her – I don't know if they were married at the time. They were, yeah. Okay. Her husband exploring her sexuality, being silly. It's a very silly sex tape in a lot of ways. They were just having fun. You know, they're holding – it's like a handheld little camcorder. It's not as though – you know, I didn't mean victim in that she is being set up to have sex on tape, but –
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Chapter 4: What was Amanda's experience with Paris Hilton before her sex tape release?
Yeah.
Which is the big question about sex tapes is like, who wants it out there? Who doesn't want it out there?
Right. And while in the confusion about Pam and Tommy is what led other people in the future to exploit that confusion and be like,
Oh, no, it was stolen. So the next one that is famous is also by somebody that I have a vague connection to, who is Paris Hilton. So I was assigned a story by Rolling Stone to interview Paris Hilton when she was on The Simple Life. And 20 minutes before I'm supposed to meet her at some, you know, celebrity sushi restaurant, her publicist calls me up and says, hey-
Paris doesn't have her car tonight. So if you can drive her home after the sushi restaurant interview, that would be awesome. And I was like, oh, yeah, I can drive Paris Hilton home. No problem. Oh, my God. So I walk into this restaurant and it's like Paris and Casey Johnson, who was the Johnson & Johnson heir that was dating Tila Tequila. And Paris is just in full form.
And she's like, yo, you know, what's up? How are you? And I was really young at this time, right? So I'm like, yeah, down to like join your fun hang here over sushi. And she's just playing with her phone. She was like, oh my God, I was just like on a yacht in the Mediterranean. All these people are like calling me and I'm like, bitches, I'm in the Mediterranean. I cannot hear you.
And then she's like, hey, we're going to my sister Nikki's house.
birthday party at this club you know why don't you come and i'm like sure tara reed gets in the car yeah what's up you know we're the designated driver it's just i'm the designated driver for these people we get to the club she i had a sunroof in my car she pops out the sunroof and starts yelling hey like bitches over there what's up and then she's like oh no i don't know those people
Like she's fully crazy, right? And awesome, by the way. I should say awesome. She and Tara Reid disappear into a bathroom for like 20 minutes. I don't know what happened in there. This whole night happens. Basically, we end up with the guys from Limp Bizkit and somebody stole our purses. Wake up the next morning and obviously I have a million messages from the publicist.
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Chapter 5: How did Paris Hilton's sex tape become public?
Yes, it's all in the story.
I'm sure I read it at the time.
But then basically they're freaking out to the point where I'm like, I don't know why you guys are freaking out about this so much. Her image is to be a crazy party girl heiress. So what exactly are we talking about? Nothing that bad happened. Freaking out, freaking out. And I'm like, look, I still need to do the sit down.
And they're like, you can go to Kyle Richards' house and you can sit with Kyle and Paris and do the sit down. Of course, I go there and it's totally weird. She's back in her pretending to be little girl persona. Everything you see about Paris in public is not who she is, right? And I'm just like, why are these people being so hella intense about this? This is Rolling Stone. Who cares?
And like two days later, the sex tape comes out.
So this was the fall of 03.
It was the fall of 03.
When the show was coming out.
Yes.
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Chapter 6: Who is Kevin Blatt and how did he become involved in celebrity scandals?
done well because also there's two moments when the tape quote-unquote came out okay so let's get into this so i said two days you know two days later i mean do i remember this was 20 years ago it could have been two months later but in some short amount of time right but you tell me what the i know what the sequence of events is when she found out about her sexy i'm such a loser it's like so much so okay
You know, the fascinating thing is this catapulted her into fame. I was just a reporter being assigned to write a two page story off of a dumb reality show she had.
Right. Right. Right. I mean, I this accelerated what was already happening. Right. She was very famous already. And this sort of brought it to a new level. And the combination of it coming out when The Simple Life was coming out at this perfect moment for reality TV. But that's what happened.
But in fact, the tape would not have been worth anything if she had not already been this like partying hard tabloid darling. Yeah, it wasn't thought. Oh, simple lay. Yeah, like increasing over the course of the year-ish before. She was already becoming this tabloid darling. She got this reality TV show in the works. They had shot the reality TV show.
I think it had done really well at Upfronts in maybe September or something. And so maybe like two years earlier when she was 19, she had slept with this guy, Rick Solomon. I want to say it was Shannon Doherty that he dated. It was. Okay, great. Okay, so he had this reputation for sleeping with starlets. He was drinking a lot. He was doing a lot of drugs. He's sober now, so I can say that.
And he's a gambler. He's an obsessive gambler. He later married Pamela Anderson, like Rick Solomon, fascinating character. Wow. And he loved filming his encounters. And I think this is maybe a novelty in the 90s and the early 2000s. Back when it was not everybody, you didn't have a video camera in your pocket. Like people would bring out the camcorder and then they would watch it later.
And it was a private thing. And it was definitely a rich person toy. And so it was a celebrity toy. And some people were into that. Who cares? People are into that now. And so Rick Solomon filmed a lot of his sexual encounters.
So not just with Paris.
Oh, he had like a library, if I recall correctly.
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