Pamela Anderson has lived a hell of a life. Through her roles in Baywatch and Home Improvement, she became the quintessential sex symbol of the 1990s. Behind the scenes, her relationships with Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee and Kid Rock have become the stuff of tabloid legend.
Her tell-all memoir, Love, Pamela, is a document of moments hilarious and tragic, beautiful and abusive. While the actress has many nice things to say about how Kid Rock treated her family, the rap-rocker showed his ugly side during their breakup. In the book, Anderson alleges that Kid Rock screamed at her and called her derogatory names following an advanced screening of Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 breakthrough comedy blockbuster, Borat.
“The screening at Ron and Kelly Meyer’s house didn’t go well,” said Anderson. “Lots of important industry people were there — Steven Spielberg, Rick Rubin, Laird Hamilton and his wife, Gabby Reece. I didn’t tell Bob [ Kid Rock’s real name Robert James Ritchie] I was in the movie, because I wanted to surprise him. I forgot about the part in the film that referenced the ‘sex tape.’
“Bob stormed out, calling me a whore and worse,” the actress continued. “He was embarrassed, and his reaction was not thought through. Laird yelled, ‘Don’t get mad at Superwoman when she busts out her cape!’ After I chased Bob to his car, he peeled out, leaving me there alone. I turned back and apologized, then asked if anyone could give me a ride home. When I walked in, Bob was smashing a photo on the wall. He said he was sick of waking up to a picture of me and David LaChapelle every day. But it wasn’t me and David — it was Marilyn Monroe and Bert Stern.”
In the movie Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen plays the eponymous reporter who travels from his Kazakhstan home to America in order to document U.S. culture. He becomes obsessed with Pamela Anderson after finding a Baywatch booklet. The pair eventually meet at a book signing, where Borat tries to kidnap Anderson and fails miserably.
As bad as the Borat story is, it didn’t end there. Emotions sparked up and took an ugly turn at MTV’s Video Music Awards, when Pamela Anderson presented an award to Kanye West. “I saw Bob on the red carpet and he looked at me and said, Look what the cat dragged in. Then I saw Tommy. He entered from another way — kind of sneaking in and taking a seat — and when I slipped past him to sit down, Tommy pulled me onto his lap,” she says in the memoir. “He was sitting next to the magician Criss Angel, and I asked Criss if he could make Tommy disappear. Bob saw the whole thing and was fuming from his seat across from us.
“After I presented the award to Kanye, Alicia Keys started singing her new single ‘No One,’ and at the lyrics ‘Everything’s gonna be alright,’ Tommy and Bob dove at each other. Fists were flying, and the whole thing ended up on live TV,” she said. “I walked out, and Alicia didn’t miss a beat, kept on singing. It was a setup. MTV must have been thrilled. I told the press waiting outside that we were bamboozled.”