As Pamela Anderson makes her long-overdue onscreen comeback, Gia Coppola is comparing the actress to another blonde bombshell.
The Last Showgirl director was inspired by performers like Anderson and Marilyn Monroe when helming the Kate Gersten-penned film, which premieres Dec. 13 in theaters, after seeing the former’s 2023 Netflix documentary Pamela, a Love Story.
“It was all these actresses from the past I would dream about: Wouldn’t this be an interesting role for Marilyn Monroe?” Coppola told Entertainment Weekly of casting the movie.
In The Last Showgirl, Anderson stars as Shelley, a Vegas dancer who finds herself at a frightening crossroads when her show is cancelled after a 38-year run and she is told she’s too old to join a new show. Meanwhile, she tries to reconnect with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), while maintaining the other relationships in her life and plotting her future.
Coppola found the character of Shelley to have several similarities with Monroe and Anderson. “She is the Marilyn of our time,” she said of Anderson.
Kate Gersten, Kiernan Shipka, Gia Coppola, Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd and Brenda Song of The Last Showgirl at the Deadline TIFF Studio.
Michael Buckner for Deadline.
“I find her to be a very interesting human being,” added Coppola. “She’s very intelligent and has an art background, and I could see she was a woman that was really craving to express herself as an actress creatively. I saw a lot of parallels with Shelley, but I also saw this was a person that was really hungry to show her talents.”
Anderson previously said the role “was meant for me” as she spoke on a panel during Deadline’s TIFF Studio in September, explaining why she related to Shelley and Gersten’s script.
“I guess I can relate to it on so many different levels. As a mother, as a person in this industry,” said Anderson. “Most of my career has been about the external, and not the soul of what really happens behind the superficial qualities that people even hire you for, or know you for. And you’re always just like, there’s so much more to me than what people see and I don’t know if you’re ever gonna get the chance to show that, so that was really why I was so excited about this movie… I feel like a new baby in this industry in this film and I feel like it’s just the beginning.”
Also starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song and Jason Schwartzman, The Last Showgirl is produced by Schwartzman and Natalie Farrey.