‘I don’t feel like a victim’: Pamela Anderson isn’t looking for sympathy — she’s just telling her story | CBC Radio

WARNING: This article contains details of sexual assault that some may find disturbing or triggering.

As a sex symbol, Pamela Anderson has had to endure harassment, humiliation and repeated violations of her privacy. Now, she’s finally telling her story in her own words, without the help of ghostwriters.

In a new memoir, Love, Pamela, and accompanying Netflix documentary, Pamela, a Love Story, the Canadian-born actor and model sets the record straight on her life, rise to fame and sex tape scandal. She also reveals a sad history of sexual assault, from being molested as a child by her female babysitter to being gang-raped in high school by her boyfriend and six of his friends.

WATCH | Pamela Anderson’s interview with Tom Power:

Despite her traumatic past, Anderson said she’s “not necessarily looking for sympathy,” she just wants to regain authorship of her life.

“I don’t feel like a victim,” she said in a new interview on Q with Tom Power. “There’s things that happen in people’s lives, and you have to get over them because they accumulate, you know? Something happens to you, then another thing happens, and it kind of compounds. So it’s great to be able to go back and feel those feelings.”

After the abuse she suffered in her early years, Anderson said she experienced paralyzing shyness, shame and a lack of agency.

“With the times where I felt abused, you know, taken advantage of when I was a young teenager and again with a boyfriend and his friends … I felt really shut down, and that was, I think, what the shyness was. I felt really confused,” she told Power. “I work a lot with the National Domestic Violence Hotline — my foundation supports them — and we talk a lot about abuse and how it’s something that’s taken away from you.”

The first time Anderson posed for Playboy, she was shaking from nervousness, but it flipped a switch inside of her. “I think that that’s where I kind of took my power back,” she said. “I felt empowered by it. I felt like a woman. I felt like I had claimed my sensuality, my sexuality — that this was my body, and I was in control.”

After Playboy, everything changed for Anderson. She made her first appearance in Married… with Children in the fall of 1990, Home Improvement in 1991 and Baywatch in 1992. A few years later, she married Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.

“All I ever wanted was a family and kids, and to look after somebody, and to have that kind of heightened sense of romance,” said Anderson.

In 1995, a tape of the newlywed couple’s intimate moments (recorded privately during their honeymoon) was stolen from their home and leaked on the internet, becoming one of the first and most infamous viral sex videos.

“It was never a tape made for distribution or a sex tape,” she said. “It was home movies they spliced together because Tommy and I were naked all the time. I mean, we were just crazy — two people in love.… Maybe there was one tiny little part that was more sexual, but it was more spliced together to look like we made something. I still haven’t seen it, so I’m not quite sure what it is.”

WATCH | Official trailer for Pamela, a Love Story:

‘Now I can move on’

Last year, a series called Pam & Tommy dramatized Anderson’s turbulent three-year marriage to Lee. Director Lake Bell said the intention behind the project was to reframe the narrative around Anderson, but instead, the series came under fire for re-exploiting her, as it was made without her involvement or permission.

“I never had anything to do with it, and neither did Tommy,” said Anderson. “It felt silly and superficial and shallow and rude. I always get concerned for my kids, you know. We’ve all gone through a lot together and we get through things as they come. And we’ve always been very open and honest about all the things in our life, but I didn’t really want that to come out.”

It’s been very freeing to know that it’s done. It’s done. Now I can move on.– Pamela Anderson

When Pam & Tommy was released, Anderson was already working on her book and documentary. Her sons, Brandon and Dylan, supported her throughout the process.

“They just thought that it’d be nice to be able to tell the full story,” she said. “And they weren’t even really aware of the full, full story — I mean, the gritty, gory details. But they knew I’m strong for a reason.… Brandon said a lot of this was putting pieces of his life back together or seeing his life unfold in reverse, he likes to say. And we’re all very close. It’s been very freeing to know that it’s done. It’s done. Now I can move on.”

Written by Vivian Rashotte. Interview produced by Kaitlyn Swan.