I was in Pamela Anderson’s infamous sex tape – Tommy still brags ‘we broke the internet before the Kardashians’
WELL before Google, Pornhub or revenge porn existed, footage of Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee’s honeymoon intimacy “broke the internet”.
Now, nearly 25 years on, that infamous sex tape is right at the centre of a Disney+ TV series starring Mamma Mia!’s Lily James as the sizzling Pammy.
Much-hyped drama Pam & Tommy recounts the couple’s doomed romance and how the home movie was made public.
A newly released teaser trailer for the series reveals how Brit Lily, 32, has become a dead ringer of Canadian- American sexbomb Pam. The ex-Playboy model, now 54 and five times married, has told friends she will NEVER watch the show because she believes the sex tape destroyed her marriage to the American Mötley Crüe drummer.
Yet Tommy, 59, also five times married, who is played by Avengers US actor Sebastian Stan, 39, WILL tune in. He is “stoked” by the “cool story”.
In an exclusive chat, the couple’s old pal, US artist Guerin Swing, who featured in the tape, reveals Tommy is proud to have created history. Guerin told The Sun: “Tommy said to me the other day, ‘Let everyone know we did it first. Before the Kardashians, before anyone else. Let the mother-f***ers know, we broke the internet first’.”
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Head in a bucket
Pam and Tommy’s union was explosive right from their first meeting, at a New Year’s Eve party in 1994. Off his head on ecstasy and champagne Tommy, who had divorced US actress Heather Locklear a year before, held Pam’s face and licked the side of it “from chin to temple”.
He was besotted and later kept trying for a date. Uninvited, he flew to see her on a photoshoot in Cancun, Mexico, in February 1995 — and proposed. Pam said yes and, according to him, “stuck her tongue down my throat”. They married four days later.
Guerin says: “In LA, they came to my studio. She was so casual, no make-up, in Ugg boots and sweatpants. He was like, ‘Heyyyyy, this is my new wife’.”
But when Guerin — who had hung out with Tommy since the early 1990s — asked Pam to sign his “black book” of contacts she replied she had no pen. He recalls: “I said, ‘Sign it in blood’, and they both did. I grabbed two razors and she hacked into her hand and bled like crazy — and wrote in blood with her finger, ‘I love Tommy, Pamela loves Tommy’.”
Guerin met up with them on their honeymoon at Lake Mead near Las Vegas and in the sex tape is seen running about in a hotel corridor with a bucket on his head. Only an eight-minute section of the recording is X-rated. Guerin says: “It’s essentially them just being kids, goofing with a video camera, a new toy. Tommy never showed me or anyone the video. He never talked bad about Pam. It wasn’t for anyone else to see.”
It would have stayed locked in the safe in the couple’s mansion near Malibu if Tommy had not fallen out with his builders, who were fired for messing about too much instead of finishing the over-budget job.
It would have stayed locked in the safe in the couple’s mansion near Malibu if Tommy had not fallen out with his builders.
Electrician Rand Gauthier, played by Canadian Seth Rogen in the TV series, returned to demand pay. But Guerin says: “They walked on to the property without being allowed. Tommy was furious. He got a shotgun and told them to f**k off.” Rand wanted revenge. He told Rolling Stone magazine: “I had never been held at gunpoint. It screwed with my head.”
One night, as the couple slept, he broke into the garage and removed a fridge-sized metal safe. He claims he got it into a truck alone, but others think that impossible. After opening it with a blow torch he found something far more valuable than the money and jewellery he expected — the camcorder tape of Pam and Tommy getting it on.
Having worked in the porn industry, he knew others would pay to watch surgically enhanced Pam in the throes of passion. It was well before online streaming, so at first the video was advertised on the internet and distributed as a VHS tape. Then the Internet Entertainment Group (IEG) offered paid access to the recording online.
Within a year it had earned almost £60million and the firm’s US founder, Seth Warshavsky, was described as a “pioneer”.
Internet dark side
Tommy and Pam had not noticed the tape was gone. Guerin says: “They realised the tape was out there when it appeared for sale on the internet — not that any of us knew what the internet was.”
Tommy hired Hollywood “fixer” Anthony Pellicano — later jailed for weapon and extortion offences — to find out who had taken the safe. Suddenly, Guerin was in the frame. He had been hired by Tommy and Pam as an interior designer to turn their home into a “fantasy land”. He made them a leather “sex swing” and painted a mural behind a lift from garage to bedroom showing hell at the bottom and heaven the top.
Tommy owed him £3,600 for a painting and that made him a suspect. Guerin claims: “Pellicano turned up with a heavy who looked like a mafia wise guy. They pushed me on a sofa and said I’d stolen a tape.”
Guerin had no idea a sex tape was missing, so replied: “Tape? I’ve got those tapes,” pointing to movies he had borrowed from Tommy. He says: “My stupidity helped. They realised I didn’t have the sex tape.” But Guerin never spoke to Tommy for two years after that, before they finally made up. He says: “It was horrible. Everyone got sued. Nothing good came out of it.”
Pam and Tommy agreed to what they thought would be a one-off internet broadcast of the tape. When IEG continued selling access in 1998, they sued for £70million and won £1million plus costs. No one was ever charged with the safe’s theft.
Pam and Tommy insist they never made money from the tape’s airing, and Guerin says: “They hate the existence of that tape.” But he adds: I don’t think they regret making it because everyone should be able to do what they want in their home. They were in love. They planned children, had children.”
People judged her like the sex tape was her thing, but that’s not true. She was not a porn star.
US artist Guerin Swing
They have sons Brandon, 25, and Dylan, 24. But the marriage lasted just three years, until 1998, after Tommy admitted assaulting his wife and was sentenced to six months in jail. Although Pam had been a Playboy cover girl several times, she never agreed to explicit videos.
Guerin says: “People judged her like the sex tape was her thing, but that’s not true. She was not a porn star.” Lily James tells the latest edition of lifestyle magazine Porter: “It provoked an internet and celebrity culture that, now, is way out of hand.
“There is no such thing as privacy now. We’re constantly sharing our lives, with an audience that doesn’t care about you. And giving away information to corporations using it for profit. I know a time before that happened, but there are young girls who have no idea. I hope a lot has changed. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s changed quite enough.”
She added of the tape: “The shaming was extreme. Unfortunately that’s still the case, don’t you think. Women are held to much higher standards and attacked in ways that feel so vicious. Pamela had wit and grace in the way she held herself. I admire that strength.”
Actor Seth, also a producer of Pam & Tommy, hopes the eight-part drama shows viewers the stolen recording’s release did lasting harm. He said: “Her privacy was violated and the world exploded over something private and personal, without the consent of the people involved.”
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If the series does portray Pam as an innocent victim of the internet’s dark side, she might change her mind about watching it. At the moment, though, she is set against the project. Guerin says: “I saw Pamela last month. We’ve stayed in contact. Tommy and Pam’s attitude to the show is, why dredge this up? But they get that it’s popular culture and what happens when you’re famous. It was the first celebrity sex tape.”
- Pam & Tommy starts streaming on on February 2.
