In her new memoir, Love, Pamela, Pamela Anderson describes an uncomfortable incident she says took place in 1991, when she was on the set of Home Improvement with the sitcom’s star Tim Allen.
Anderson, who was 23 at the time, had previously appeared twice in Playboy, and was new to acting—appearing opposite Allen, who was 14 years her senior, in a recurring role that would last two seasons.
“On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe,” Anderson writes in the HarperCollins memoir. “He opened his robe and flashed me quickly—completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.”
In an email to Vanity Fair, Allen denied the allegation via his publicist, saying, “No, it never happened. I would never do such a thing.”
In a separate statement shared exclusively with Vanity Fair, Anderson expands on her account, insisting the incident took place.
“This true story is just one of many surreal and uncomfortable situations I learned to navigate,” Anderson writes. “My book goes into how it made me feel over the course of my life and, in this case, my career. I have no ill will toward Tim. But like the rest, it should never have happened.”
In her memoir, Anderson adds, “It was the first of many bizarre encounters where people felt they knew me enough to make absolute fools out of themselves.” She notes, “Here you go, Tim, was my only line every episode, and when they decided to expand my part, it was, Here you go, Tim. Have a nice day.” Anderson eventually left Home Improvement to focus on Baywatch, even though she says Baywatch paid her less. “I ended up making my career choice based on quality of life,” she writes.
Anderson began writing what would become her memoir during the pandemic, shortly after moving back to her hometown of Ladysmith, Canada. Last year, a Hulu TV show called Pam & Tommy purported to tell Anderson’s story—at least, the chapter involving the infamous stolen tape she made with her first husband, Tommy Lee—but the series was made without Anderson’s approval or participation. The memoir is Anderson’s own accounting of her life in full—“beginning to end, my first memory to my last,” she recently told The New York Times. She said it was the first time that she had complete control over a project: “I felt I need to tell my story. And I really couldn’t let anybody do it but me.”
The memoir, which will be released January 31, chronicles Anderson’s modest upbringing in Canada—where she says she was sexually abused as a child and teenager—and her career posing for Playboy and starring in Baywatch, the series that would make her an international star. For the first time, she describes at length the emotional trauma of having her and Lee’s private home movies stolen, and marketed to the public for someone else’s profit. She also describes her marriages and motherhood.
The memoir will be accompanied by a documentary, coproduced by her son Brandon Lee, called Pamela, a Love Story, which will be released on Netflix January 31. Directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Ryan White, (The Case Against 8, The Keepers), the documentary takes viewers inside Anderson’s life in Ladysmith as she reflects on her life as a misunderstood star and mother, and her marriages.