WWE Hall of Famer Kid Rock’s ex-wife and Baywatch star Pamela Anderson has a lot to reveal in her upcoming documentary, Pamela, a Love Story, dropping the first episode on Netflix on January 31. She revealed in the documentary that she’s been in financial trouble for much of her life.
Pamela Anderson dealt with financial struggles
In the film, Anderson talks about turning down $5 million for her infamous stolen tape, cut from home videos made with then-husband Tommy Lee, in the ’90s with the pair not making a dime. Playboy centerfolds notoriously never made models rich, and she didn’t have an agent when she negotiated her deal on the most-watched TV show in the world, Baywatch.
Her son Brandon Lee, a producer on the film, revealed that his mother has been in debt most of her life, while they discussed the tape, which she insisted she didn’t regret not monetizing — even if the offer had been a billion — because it was a violation. Anderson also expressed an ongoing worry about her credit cards being declined.
White, who helmed the documentary, told Yahoo Entertainment he was “shocked” to learn of her financial woes, especially that she got so little from global hit Baywatch, which she appeared in in the mid-’90s for five years.
“She was the most famous woman in the world on the most famous show in the world and she doesn’t have a nest egg from from Baywatch to rely upon,” White marvels.
White said that he “just assumed” Anderson, “an icon” in pop culture, would “be extremely wealthy.” He didn’t realize she wasn’t until mid-shoot. He talked about how they were out to eat together, outside Las Vegas, and she insisted on paying.
“She said, like, ‘Ryan, you always pay,'” which is customary for a doc director, “‘just let me pay this once,” he recalled. “As she was handing over a credit card, she made this like half joke [about how her credit card sometimes] doesn’t work… I laughed, but she was like, ‘No, really, a lot of times throughout my career my credit cards were declined. I am just not a good financial planner.'”
