Nineties scandals are sure ripe for the picking in Hollywood as of late! First, Ryan Murphy came out with “Impeachment: American Crime Story” detailing Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Then, the 2021 biopic “Spencer” chronicling the end of Princess Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles was released. And now, “Pam & Tommy,” Hulu’s new eight-episode limited series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous sex tape, has hit the airwaves. Based upon a 2014 Rolling Stone article by Amanda Chicago Lewis and featuring Lily James and Sebastian Stan in the lead roles, the tale is tailor-made for the screen!
Though only together for three short years following a whirlwind four-day courtship that culminated in a spontaneous beachside wedding, the duo will always be inexorably linked in the cultural consciousness thanks to their sex tape, which was stolen by a disgruntled employee in 1995 and then leaked a few months later for all the world to see.
As the sordid story goes, shortly after tying the knot, the tabloid darlings hired a construction team to carry out a slew of outlandish renovations on their Malibu mansion. On that team was electrician/carpenter/sometimes porn star Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen), who soon tired of Tommy’s vacillating demands, not to mention the massive IOUs the rocker was quickly accumulating. When Rand finally confronted him to ask for the $20,000 he was owed, the Mötley Crüe drummer balked, pulled a gun and forced the crew off his property. The event left Gauthier understandably traumatized – and reeling in debt. So he decided to seek repayment via alternative measures, i.e. breaking into the couple’s digs (while crawling on his hands and knees covered in a white Tibetan yak fur rug so as to disguise himself as Pamela’s dog for the CCTV cameras) to steal their massive six-foot by four-foot by three-foot safe. As noted on Celebrity Net Worth, “Rand knew he could evade the home’s security systems because… HE INSTALLED THE SYSTEM!” You can’t make this stuff up!
As outlandish as the scheme might seem, all went according to plan and, safe firmly in hand offsite, Rand “spent an hour cutting into the back with a borrowed demolition saw outfitted with a composite diamond carbide blade,” according to Rolling Stone. Inside, he discovered jewelry, guns and, much to his surprise and delight, a sex tape Pam and Tommy had made on their honeymoon. Seeing dollar signs, he began selling copies online and, before he knew it, the footage went viral, before that was even a thing. Though the illicit 54-minute video eventually racked up a whopping $77 million in sales, incredibly Rand told Lewis he never saw a cent of it! She notes, “Instead he watched his life fall apart as his greed destroyed nearly every shred of the happiness he’d carved out for his adult self.” The script truly writes itself!
The series, not surprisingly, has been generating fanfare from the start, in large part due to the incredible transformations Stan and James underwent to become Lee and Anderson. The painstaking process, spearheaded by makeup artist David Williams, hairstylist Barry Lee Moe and makeup effects designer Jason Collins, made use of what KION News calls a “puppeteered appendage” and, in James’ case, “a combination of 15 pairs of lace eyebrows, four wigs, two rows of hand-sculpted dentures, a breastplate and a prosthetic forehead — and that’s before Williams could even think about recreating Anderson’s makeup.” The effect is an unbelievable reproduction of the “Baywatch” star’s likeness – right down to the barely noticeable scars on her arm from a leech attack she endured when she was nine!
“Pam & Tommy” is worth a watch for the incredible metamorphosis of the two lead actors alone. And the locations are also pretty darn fun! Set and filmed in Los Angeles and its environs, the somewhat campy series authentically brings a 1990s-era version of the city to life. As first identified by the 90210Locations website, a few key sites featured include Avalon Hollywood, which stands in for Sanctuary, the nightclub where the couple first met on New Year’s Eve 1994 when, as Pamela later recalled, Tommy “came up, grabbed me and licked my face. I thought he was a cool, friendly, nice guy. I gave him my number.” And they say chivalry is dead! The Embassy Suites Mandalay Beach Hotel & Resort in Oxnard plays the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun, where the rocker followed the “Baywatch” star and ultimately wooed her into a quickie marriage. Downtown L.A.’s historic Olvera St. plays the Cancun marketplace where Pam and Tommy race to find a priest to perform the ceremony. And Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant in Valley Glen (which also cameoed in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) plays both the eatery where Rand and Uncle Miltie (Nick Offerman) meet with moneyman Butchie (Andrew Dice Clay) to secure funding to mass-produce the sex tape and where Rand later takes his ex-wife, Erica (Taylor Schilling), on a date.
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Image Credit: Hulu Most of the story, though, takes place at Pam and Tommy’s massive Malibu manse. The couple’s actual former home, located at 31341 Mulholland Hwy, fell victim to the Woolsey Fire in November 2018, so producers had to look elsewhere for a suitable stand-in. They found the ideal replacement in a colossal Mediterranean estate located at 22634 La Quilla Dr. in Chatsworth’s exclusive guard-gated Indian Springs Estates community. (Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.)
Custom-built for its then-owners in 1992, the sprawling residence features six bedrooms and six baths in 9,907 square feet. Per a 2001 real estate advertisement that ran in the Los Angeles Times, amenities at the luxe pad include a grand marble entry with a double staircase, a “lite/brite” open floor plan and a home theater. The surrounding 2.18-acre lot boasts a tennis court, large front and back lawns, a pool and a one-bedroom, two-bath cabana/guest house. The property, which last sold in 2003 for just over $2.5 million and is worth $3.99 million today, is certainly befitting a rock legend and his TV star wife, so it is no surprise producers zeroed in on it for “Pam & Tommy.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures And the place is no stranger to the screen! The residence also popped up as the Las Vegas home of Mike Tyson (who played himself) in the 2009 hit comedy “The Hangover.”
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Image Credit: Hulu Only the exterior of the expansive pad was featured in “Pam & Tommy.” According to production designer Ethan Tobman, the interior of the couple’s home was a set “built from scratch by an astoundingly talented crew working at lightspeed deep in the heart of the year we spent in 1996.”
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Image Credit: Hulu -
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures “The Hangover,” on the other hand, did make use of the inside of the Chatsworth property. As evidenced above in screen captures comparing the two productions, Tobman’s design, or at least the foyer portion of it, was heavily influenced by the real thing.
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Image Credit: Douglas Elliman Interestingly though, the set doesn’t much resemble Pam and Tommy’s actual former Malibu estate, the entry of which can be seen above in a 2018 MLS photo. That property was far more Mediterranean in style than its onscreen counterpart.
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Image Credit: Douglas Elliman The exterior of the Malibu pad (pictured above circa 2018) was also quite different in style than the TV version, although the two dwellings do have quite a few parallels. The Malibu abode was built in 1991, just a year before the Chatsworth house, and sat on a comparable 2.29 acres. The interior was comprised of six bedrooms and six baths, just like its Chatsworth counterpart, though it measured in at a slightly smaller 7,462 square feet.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Tommy bought the estate for $837,886 on February 14, 1995, just a few days before marrying Pam. His eccentric renovations included outfitting the interior with a recording studio, a powder room wallpapered in yellow fur, a home theatre boasting a rounded purple velvet couch and an owners’ suite with a see-through shower and, of course, a bedroom sex swing, because honestly, what home is complete without one?
Following the couple’s split, Tommy invited cameras into the residence for a 2000 episode of “MTV Cribs,” footage from which was also featured in the Hulu series “The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For.”
The sex tape theft was not the only notorious event to take place on the premises during the rocker’s tenure. In 2001, a four-year-old boy drowned in the pool while attending a fifth birthday party for the Lees’ eldest son, Brandon (who recently found fame in “The Hills: New Beginnings”). The boy’s parents later unsuccessfully sued Tommy for $10 million and were represented by none other than Thomas Girardi, former legal titan/“The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star who is currently embroiled in several lawsuits of his own.
Tommy offloaded the place in 2005 for $2.5 million and it subsequently changed hands a couple of times, even selling to Nick Richards, lead singer of British pop band Boys Don’t Cry, at one point before ultimately succumbing to the Woolsey Fire. Despite moving out more than a decade beforehand, the property obviously still held a special place in Tommy’s heart as he toured the wreckage in late 2019, posting the footage to Instagram. While several media outlets picked up the story, the video did not prove nearly as popular as the one the rock star recorded with Anderson 24 years prior.