00:00So you may think you know my next guest, you've certainly seen her as the global star of Baywatch
00:06and gracing the cover of Playboy magazine 14 times, but there is far more to Pamela Anderson
00:13than all that, as I discovered in a wide-ranging conversation on the perils of being a woman in
00:19Hollywood to reckoning with her own trauma as a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Watch.
00:26You've been open about the fact that you've had abuse in your past, and you use the word,
00:31I felt embarrassed. I think there's so many women out there now feeling that way about their own
00:37harassment or abuse, something that happened to them, embarrassed. To them, what would you say?
00:44Well, it's, yeah, we naturally blame ourselves. I didn't tell my mother for a long time,
00:49and even when I told her, she went, oh, well, that's in the past, don't even think about it anymore.
00:55But you somehow think that you were to blame. But I learned to never put myself in those situations
01:02again. And when I came to Hollywood, of course, I've had a lot of offers to do private auditions
01:07and things that made absolutely no sense, just common sense. Don't go into a hotel room alone.
01:12Don't, if someone answers the door on a bathrobe, you know, leave. You know, there's these things
01:17that are common sense, but I know Hollywood is very seductive, and people want to be famous,
01:22and sometimes you think you're going to be safe with an adult in the room, or, you know,
01:28I don't know where this security comes from, but somehow I've dodged it all.
01:33I've been offered lots of things, a condo and a Porsche to be someone's number one girl,
01:36and I just naively said, well, there must be number two then, so I'm not interested.
01:41Or just, you know, money, homes, roles in movies, and I just didn't want to do it that
01:48way. I had no desire. And I'm a romantic, and that didn't appeal to me.
01:53I understand you have had a Harvey Weinstein encounter.
01:57He's very intimidating. And I was doing a movie, Superheroes or something, I barely remember
02:04it, and I played the invisible girl with an invisible dog. And, you know, as a PETA activist
02:08and animal activist, I don't work with animals in film, because they're treated horribly.
02:11And so I said, if I have an invisible dog, I just want to make sure there's no dog there.
02:14And I can't do the film if there's going to be a dog in the film.
02:18And that was it. And then he called and said, you little, you're so lucky that I put you
02:22in a film, and you're Pamela Anderson, you don't deserve anything. If you don't do this,
02:26you'll never work in this town again, and this whole thing. And I was like, never in my life
02:29have been talked about. And I've had some really bad boyfriends, and I've never been talked
02:32to this way.
02:33Were you surprised when you heard all the women coming out about him?
02:36No. I think it was common knowledge that certain producers or certain people in Hollywood
02:43are people to avoid, privately. You know what you're getting into if you go to a hotel
02:48room, alone.
02:49Well, a lot of the women talk about how they felt their agent set it up, their agent wouldn't
02:54put them in a dangerous position, this is a famous guy.
02:56And go with them. That's what they should have done, sent somebody with them. I just think
03:01there's easy ways to remedy that. That's not a good excuse.
03:05I think next time, you know, now there's more awareness.
03:08Now there's more awareness, for sure.
03:10The dangers that lurk.
03:11The dangers that lurk.
03:12I know that you've been critical of, you know, online pornography and what that does to
03:17a relationship, what it does to a marriage. Does that include Playboy, right? That's
03:20the obvious question.
03:21Well, everyone has to figure out what their version of pornography is. Pornography, I guess,
03:25I'm considering something bad or violent or, you know, explicit. I think Playboy is cute
03:32and titillating and girl next door. I don't really consider it pornography, but some people
03:36might. If pornography is taking the place of your romantic relationship, you know, and
03:40sex and marriage, and if you haven't touched your wife in a year and you're in the basement
03:45watching porn, that's a problem. It's an addiction. And it's something people need to
03:48talk about, which they don't want to talk about. But I had, I spoke at Oxford and Cambridge
03:53on this subject and I had girls coming up with tears in their eyes saying, I'm 20 years old
03:57and my boyfriend wants to do these crazy things to me and I have no one to talk to about
04:01it
04:01and I just thank you so much for bringing this up because I don't want to do this. I don't
04:05want to humiliate myself. And he thinks this is what sex is because he's learned about sex
04:09online. And that's not what love looks like.
04:12I've heard you describe yourself as a sex kitten and you enjoy that role and you've been on the
04:17cover of Playboy 14 times. Is it hard for you to be a serious messenger? Do people diminish
04:23you because you've owned your sexuality and sensuality in that way?
04:27Well, I think it's gotten me in the door a lot. And I think there's been more good than
04:32bad, but obviously there's, you know, downsides to it as well. But I kind of like not having
04:38much to live up to because then I can surprise people. I form a full sentence. I'm a genius.
04:42You know, it's amazing. So, and I've kind of used it to my advantage and, you know, we use
04:50all we are and I love feeling sexy and being a woman. You're able to be sexy. You're able to
04:56to be a good mother. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother if you're covered in glitter and
04:59just got back from Vegas, a Vegas show. You know, it's, it's, it's all part of us.
05:05And tomorrow, part two of my interview with Pamela Anderson on her ex-husband, Tommy Lee,
05:10how she found the strength to walk away from an abusive marriage, about her visits to the
05:15Kremlin and the special relationship she has formed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
05:22He's so funny and he's, he's very kind and he's very smart. He's brilliant. And we talk
05:26about everything. I'm there for four hours at a time and I see him all the time. And we talk
05:30about, he asked me about my kids, about my life. We just have this great conversation.
05:34Is it romantic?
05:36Mm-hmm. Can you imagine being Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and Pamela Anderson
05:40walks in for a four hour visit? You're like, thank God. We talk about that.
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