The Netflix documentary is called Pamela, a love story. Her book is called Love, Pamela.
Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson points out at the beginning of her memoir that she's stumbled across "a true love story – the love of self."
The theme is consistent, and read on or watch the doco, it's apparent that love has consumed her, at times.
Anderson shares the story of how she and ex-husband, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, met in 1995 in Cancun. They connected at a techno club where she had had a mix of ecstasy and champagne, she explains.
"The rest is all a big blur," Anderson says in the doco.
"All a big happy blur."
The couple famously got married after spending just four days together.
Anderson was even dating champion surfer Kelly Slater at the time and had to call him to break it off, telling him she had got married to somebody else.
Of Lee, she says: "We didn't know anything about each other.
"And it ended up being one of the wildest, most beautiful love affairs ever."
Lee would show up on the Baywatch set when she was working and trashed her trailer after witnessing a scene where she had to kiss a co-star.
"Tommy was so jealous," she says.
"I thought it was cute. I thought it was cute and I thought that was what love is."
Anderson and Lee had two children, Brandon and Dylan, who participate in the Netflix documentary.
"My parents were actually probably the two most insane people ever to live on planet earth," Brandon says in the doco while reviewing tapes of the two.
Anderson tells Brandon: "I was just thinking about it upstairs. I was thinking, you know, I mean it's probably going to get me in a lot of shit for saying this, but I really loved your dad, like for all the right reasons and I don't think I've ever loved anybody else."
In 1998, Lee was charged with spousal abuse after grabbing Anderson while she was holding onto Dylan, who was an infant at the time.
Anderson writes in Love, Pamela that she was injured during the incident.
Lee didn't want to end their marriage, but Anderson says it "wasn't a grey area for her".
"You can't do that," she says in the doco. Reciting a letter she'd written to her sons, Anderson says she'd rather be alone than live with abuse.
She says she has never loved anyone so deeply, but they could not be together.
Anderson writes in Love, Pamela that her world was turned upside down when she read He, She and We, by Robert A. Johnson.
"Johnson talks about the myth of romantic love and how an intense, fairy-tale love is unsustainable over a length of time. Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet – tales with echoes of tragedy."
Anderson recognises the impulse in herself.
"It was the worst. I couldn't reconcile the love I had for Tommy, as a man, as a father and what I was supposed to do for the greater good."
'We never made a sex tape'
Anderson and Lee captured many moments on film and Anderson said she's glad they did.
But it would also be her undoing.
"We were newly married," Anderson says.
"We just were naked all the time and filmed each other."
A safe was stolen from their home in the mid-90s. Anderson said they had no idea when it was stolen – it could have been any time during the six-month period their home was a construction zone.
The series Pam & Tommy on Disney+ dramatises those events. Anderson says she hasn't and won't watch the series and is traumatised by its existence and the way it brought up old wounds.
Anderson says she never watched the sex tape either, but Lee told her the people behind it had spliced together all the moments of nudity they could find to make it appear like they were having sex on camera the whole time.
"We never made a sex tape," she says.
Anderson says the founder of Penthouse, Bob Guccione, offered to buy the tape for $US5 million, but the couple refused. They wanted their private property back and there was no playbook at the time for what to do in that situation. It was the first celebrity tape of its kind to go viral in the early days of the Internet.
She says they have never made a cent from the tape and she doesn't regret that decision. But she was humiliated at the deposition.
"The lawyers basically said 'you're on Playboy, you have no right to privacy'," Anderson says.
The difference, she says, was it was her choice to be in Playboy. Playboy was empowering for her.
Anderson and Lee ended up dropping the lawsuit against the distributors. She was pregnant at the time and wanted to protect her baby, having already been through a miscarriage.
Anderson says the tape marked the deterioration of her image and she knew at that point her career was over.
She writes in Love, Pamela: "Tommy was a rock star, and even though this situation hurt his heart, this was only going to add a little colour to his legendary career. Not that I was overly ambitious for a career as a serious actress, but we both knew, inevitably, any chance of that was over."
But Anderson insists in the Netflix doco that she doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her.
"My life is not a 'woe is me' story," Anderson says.
"I'm not a victim.
"I put myself in crazy situations and survived them."
Lee is yet to respond publicly to the documentary and book, but Lee's current wife, actor and comedian Brittany Furlan, took to TikTok to say "I don't sweat the comments from people who don't know me or my relationship."
She went on to say: "I'm lucky to have a really loving husband who honestly laughs all this stuff off and couldn't care less."
Love, Pamela is available in bookshops and as an ebook and audiobook read by the author and Pamela, a love story is available to stream on Netflix.
