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This week we are welcoming one of the spiciest new television shows to our screens. Pam & Tommy is bringing us the true tale behind actress Pamela Anderson and drummer Tommy Lee’s famous sex tape scandal.
Some of the events in the show are sure to surprise you and will have you reaching for your phone to find out ‘did that really happen?’.
Like all true story adaptations, Pam & Tommy does take some liberties for the sake of drama. And with neither Tommy Lee nor Pamela Anderson being directly involved with the show we may never know precisely how much is true.
But as it turns out, a lot of the wild happenings in this show are based on fact.
This article contains spoilers for Pam & Tommy.
Pam and Tommy recap: How much of the story is true?
Was the sex tape stolen?
A lot of the information that shapes Pam & Tommy comes from the 2014 Rolling Stone article Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape.
Pam & Tommy showrunner Rob Siegel told EW in an interview that “we didn’t make up a whole lot. Most of what you see in those eight episodes is in that article. The basic plot beats are all straight from the article”.
The main source in the article is Rand Gauthier, who is indeed a real person. Gauthier is played by Seth Rogen in the series and receives plenty of screen time as the man who stole the sex tape from Lee’s locked safe.
For years many didn’t realise the truth behind the sex tape scandal was that it was, in fact, stolen. Given the tape’s immense success, many assumed that Lee and Anderson had some part in releasing the tape for publicity or a payout, when in fact neither was true.
In the Rolling Stone story, Gauthier came forward to explain how he was the one responsible for stealing the tape.
Gauthier explained he had been working as a contractor at Lee and Anderson’s L.A. mansion. He alleged that after difficult dealings with the couple involving last-minute changes made to renovations, Gauthier was fired without pay, and even had a gun shoved in his face by Lee.
After this, Gauthier claimed he wanted revenge on the rock star so he plotted to steal his safe.
Gauthier spent months casing the household. Details of the exact theft are muddled, but Gauthier allegedly disabled security cameras, moved all the equipment in the studio to reach the safe and then wheeled it out on a dolly.
Months later the couple filed a police report for the stolen safe and confirmed in the list of missing items that they really didn’t know the videotape was taken from them.
Did Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee really marry after four days?
One thing viewers may be surprised to see in Pam & Tommy is the speed at which the couple’s relationship took off.
Their relationship is the definition of a whirlwind romance. Apparently, the two first met at a New Year’s Eve party in 1994 at an L.A. nightclub. Lee had recently come out of his second marriage to actress Heather Locklear and Anderson was riding the wave of her stardom from Baywatch.
It’s been reported that after just 96 hours of knowing Anderson, Lee flew to Cancun and proposed to her. The couple were married on a beach wearing a bikini and swimming shorts in 1995.
Did the porn business reject the tape?
Gauthier is believed to have taken the tape to Milton Ingley, the studio manager of the porn business he’d been working at. Together the two discovered what was on the stolen tape and decided to shop it around for distribution.
According to Rolling Stone, their first order of business was to make copies of the tape and then destroy the original Hi8 cassette by scattering its remains outside of Six Flags Magic Mountain in California.
Ingley took the tape to a number of companies he had connections with, but they all refused to take it on. The porn business was notoriously strict at the time and it became clear quickly that the tape had been stolen, seeing as neither Lee nor Anderson had signed release forms.
So the duo turned to this thing called the internet, which was still a very low key market back in the ’90s.
What’s with the talking penis in Pam and Tommy?
Pam & Tommy is no doubt a wildly R-rated show and that becomes instantly apparent by the arrival of Tommy Lee’s very large package. That also happens to talk.
The entire idea is strange but it was one that came from Lee himself. Lee’s memoir Tommyland features an entire section where Lee and his penis have a conversation.
The Pam & Tommy producers thought this would be a good way of exploring Lee’s character further, so they decided to include all of Lee, including his talking penis, in the show. Apparently, they did get some “gentle pushback” on the idea but it made its way through to the final cut.
The result is an animatronic, prosthetic appendage that took four puppeteers to handle. It is voiced by Jason Mantzoukas.
It’s definitely one of the weirdest segments in Pam & Tommy but it’s certainly not the last wild thing you’ll see in this show.
Did they hire a private investigator?
According to the Rolling Stone article, Anderson and Lee did indeed hire a private investigator named Anthony Pellicano, to find out what happened with their safe.
Don Harvey plays Pellicano in the show, who was a notorious “fixer” in Hollywood.
For years he helped take care of duties for Hollywood’s elite, but his tactics eventually caught up with him. In 2008, Pellicano was convicted of 78 counts of wiretapping and racketeering as well as other services like intimidation and identity theft and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Based on that his tough portrayal in Pam & Tommy appears to be quite accurate.
Did Pamela Anderson smash a Paparazzi’s car?
In episode four of Pam & Tommy it’s revealed that Lee and Anderson tragically suffer a miscarriage. Following this the show depicts the paparazzi being so rampant that Lee pulls over in the street to confront one of their unwelcome stalkers and Anderson goes as far as to smash the man’s windshield.
Did this really happen?
It’s hard to find any evidence of that specific event, however, Lee wrote in Mötley Crüe’s book The Dirt that “the paparazzi were so intent on getting photos, they kept cutting off the ambulance on the way to the hospital.” He said that while everyday paparazzi was one thing having them crowd the ambulance “was another story.”
Pam & Tommy’s is streaming now on Disney+ and new episodes are airing weekly.