Pamela Anderson Says Hulu's Pam & Tommy Felt Like 'Kick in the Stomach'

While she's experiencing a bit of renaissance in her career, from new film roles, a memoir and a Netflix doc examining her pared down life back on Vancouver Island, the model-actress was forced to relive her past in 2022 when Hulu's Pam & Tommy was released.

Starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, the Seth Rogen-produced series was a dramatized version of the events surrounding the theft and unauthorized release of a private sex tape that Pamela and Tommy Lee made while on honeymoon in 1995.

The show was met with acclaim during awards season, though Anderson told Glamour magazine she was "never" contacted by Hulu for input on the show, despite claims by both James and the streamer.

"They [Hulu] never called me. I've never had any input. I didn't know anything about it," Anderson, who is one the magazine's Global Women of the Year, said in a new cover story.

The sex tape scandal was a turning point Anderson -- in both her life and career -- and seeing it play out again in the series was "a lot harder" than she ever imagined.

"It made me so nauseous to even think about it again when it came out, this Hulu thing. It really felt like another kick in the stomach that people might find that entertaining," Anderson said. "And that was… I think I lost my husband, my sanity, my career."

She continued, "In the moment I didn't realize it, like post-traumatic, and so then you just start acting out. And I knew that I had lots of things that happened [to me] that I could have handled differently…In this world, it's really important how you manage your career. And I was just Wild West-ing it."

In the years that followed, Anderson said she made some career choices just to make money -- stints on reality TV (Big Brother, Dancing on Ice) on the guise that her reputation was in the gutter.

Refusing to see herself victim of the misogynistic attitude towards women in the public eye in the '90s and early 2000s, Anderson told Glamour she coped with that difficult time by laughing it off.

"And I think that's how we learned to deal with it," she added before touching on her long-lasting struggles with her identity.

"Even when I hear my name, I don't like it. I have a negative connotation with it," she admitted. "I still have a stereotype of myself almost. And so it's been hard work to try and get rid of that because I'm a woman."

Hulu is still a point of contention for Anderson, who was just informed of the streamer's documentary on Baywatch, which she said she did not want to be part of.

"Even today, someone showed me something that Hulu's doing, some kind of Baywatch [documentary] which I have nothing to do with," she maintained.

"And so they just dug up some interview," Anderson added of some never-before-seen footage of her that was used in the doc and teased in commercials for it "But, I had nothing to do with this documentary. They begged everybody around me. They tried to get my kids to talk me into it. They said they'd give them producer credits. I mean, they were trying everything. And I said, 'No, I really don't want to go backwards.'"

And she's not -- pushing forward with a raw, makeup free look that's been the topic of headlines since Anderson stepped out with it last year at Paris Fashion Week, to the film roles she's taking -- The Naked Gun and buzzed-about Last Showgirl co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis -- both out next year. Anderson also wore minimal makeup for the cover shoot.

"I feel like [now] it's the first time in my life where I feel like if I'm wearing a bathing suit…I feel fine about myself. It's so freeing. It's so crazy because sucking in…or trying to live up to this crazy expectation of what people want you to look like or be as you get older, things change," Anderson said. "I'm lucky because I've never really had to worry about my weight or anything like that, but I just... [have] never been 100% confident."

Discussing her decision to be raw and take off this "mask" of makeup she's been wearing over the years as she sheds the costume of Pamela Anderson and unveils the real her, she tells the outlet, "I've just done it and I've played with it."

"I've nothing against makeup, but I felt like it just looked better on me in my twenties than it did now. You're going to hit a crossroads in your fifties, and you go, 'Am I going to chase youth? Am I going to be miserable? Or am I going to be self-accepting?'" She continued. "And it's a practice. And it's hard to say that you're attempting all this if you're till doing the red carpets and the covers of magazines plastered in makeup."

Elaborating further, Anderson added, "This process is really empowering. I know it seems a little bit crazy. I'm also trying to find myself and who I am, kind of, underneath it all and trying to peel back the layers."

She continued, "And we're women or whoever, anybody -- what we look like underneath the mask is still good enough for a cover of a magazine. "It's important, no matter where you are in your beauty journey, to accept yourself as you are. And right now, I'm having a big moment accepting scars I have or imperfections."