Even if Pamela Anderson hadn’t impressed everyone with her performance in The Last Showgirl, this year proved we owe her a collective apology for all of that time we reduced her to a pile of bleach blonde hair and pair of boobs in a red swimsuit. Her career has been on an upward swing since last year when she published a memoir and had the documentary Pamela: A Love Story, produced for Netflix. Amidst all of that, she went even further in shedding her previous image and announced she was going makeup-free.
While Anderson’s transformative year may shock audiences, it’s something Brandon Thomas Lee, Pamela’s eldest son with Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, has been working with her to make possible for several years. It’s a labor of love for the 28-year-old actor/producer. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lee said
The reason I got involved, other than for various business reasons — my personal mission was to give my mom the opportunities she gave me as a child. She would do anything for me. She showed up and was a very good mother. And at a certain point in your life, you become a protector.
I knew from a very early age that I was going to eventually be the one that put the stake in the ground for my family and rally around that.
It’s obvious from the way he speaks in that interview that Brandon is fluent in Marketing and PR, which he’s put to good use on behalf of Pamela’s career. He admits it would have been very easy for him to make a lot of money relying on her bombshell image. But he knew that wasn’t what Anderson wanted for herself. These days he’s proud to see all of her hard work paying off.
She wasn’t this sex symbol anymore. She was a human being, and I think people were looking at her in a completely new light. And I feel like that kind of reintroduced her to the world. It feels like everyone’s rooting for her.
It’s all somewhat surreal to the actress right now though. Pamela is nominated for a Golden Globe and has a lot of attention on her as the awards season ramps up. In her own Variety interview she copped to being in awe of everything happening right now.
“It’s getting better, but it’s still a little hard to walk into these rooms and and see people who you’ve admired for so long,” Anderson said. “You put out your hand, shake their hand, and have a conversation. It’s scary and hard, but it’s exciting. I’m challenging myself to do that.”
While it may be overwhelming, Anderson is enjoying every minute of it. She seemed to have a really good time in the Criterion Closet this month.
If we scrub everything else about 2024 from our brains, we should remember it as the year Brandon got Pamela Anderson her flowers. May we all be so lucky as to have someone in our lives who believes in us the way he believes in his mom.