Pamela Anderson: ‘I’ve Been Getting Ready My Whole Life for This Role’
In The Last Showgirl, a Gia Coppola-helmed film that premiered at Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6, veteran Las Vegas showgirl Shelly discovers that the world has changed quite a bit since she took on the job some thirty years ago.
Pamela Anderson knows a thing or two about that. The Canadian-born actress, who plays Shelly in the film, came to Los Angeles in late 1989, booked by Playboy Magazine and with a bathing suit-clad role in Baywatch in her near future. Her bombshell image and a tumultuous marriage led to her becoming tabloid fodder for a large part of the nineties.
But those days are far behind her now. In fact, the 57-year-old has found herself at the center of what some have dubbed a “Pamaissance”; the rebirth of Pamela Anderson in the public eye. First, there was Netflix documentary Pamela, a Love Story, directly followed by memoir Love, Pamela. Her activism, whether her fight for animal rights, support for Julian Assange or the simple but strikingly bold move to go makeup-free, has taken center stage.
And 2022 miniseries Pam & Tommy, although unauthorized and described by Anderson as “salt in the wounds,” had a whole generation looking back in shame about once ridiculing the actress, who fell victim to a crime when a sex tape she made with then-husband Tommy Lee was stolen and distributed.
While Shelly in The Last Showgirl may not be at the point of reinventing herself just yet, Anderson did relate to her immediately. “I think I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this role. I was pretty much at the same point,” the actress said in Toronto, even telling the audience at a q&a that she considered herself the only person who could take on the role. “I’ve never felt that strongly about something.”
On stage, Anderson joked about the quality of the material she usually gets sent by dubbing Kate Gersten’s screenplay “the only coherent” script that has ever come her way. So when Coppola agreed she was the best person for the job, she jumped on the chance. “I thought: you know what, I have nothing to lose. I’m just gonna do it. Just be it.”
In The Last Showgirl, Shelly isn’t just dealing with the closure of her show Le Razzle Dazzle, the type of feathers-and-rhinestones revue Las Vegas once touted, but has lost its appetite for. The end of that era also comes with an even more personal reckoning for Shelly, as her all-consuming love for the stage has profoundly affected her bond with daughter Hannah, played by Billie Lourd.
For Lourd, exploring this mother/daughter relationship was “deeply meaningful” as it took her back to the bond between her mother, Carrie Fisher, and grandmother Debbie Reynolds, who passed away within days of each other in December 2016.
“Getting to play this character was extremely cathartic for me, because it felt like Shelly was my grandma and I got to be my mom. And I got to understand my mom on a deeper level than I ever had,” Lourd explained. “It was a beautiful experience. And to get to do that with Pamela was an absolute gift. She is a wonderful mother in real life. And she was a wonderful mother to me on this film. I feel so lucky to have been a part of it.”