Pamela Anderson is in a good place right now, literally.
“We really have the most beautiful sunrises here on the Island. It’s a beautiful day,” said Anderson during a recent conversation over Zoom from her six-acre oceanfront property in Ladysmith.
The Baywatch alum’s grandparents purchased the property, known as the Arcady Auto Court, in the 1950s. Anderson’s parents lived in a cabin there when they were first married, and Anderson, now 55, grew up there.
“I think I was really spoiled,” Anderson said. “When you grow up on the beach, you just expect it every morning. You expect these mornings.”
The Vancouver Island property stars alongside the model/actor/activist and tabloid target in the new HGTV Canada eight-part home renovation show Pamela’s Garden of Eden, which premieres today at 10 p.m.
“I just kind of sit around sometimes and go, ‘How did I get here? What happened?’ I just left here, I went around the world and I came back slightly unscathed. I came back in one piece, which is a miracle,” Anderson said.
“I always knew that I would come back here. I always knew if I had this place, I would keep a little bit of my sanity and a little bit of my feet on the ground.”
Anderson said her plan from the time she purchased the property from her grandmother about 30 years ago was to return and “create a masterpiece.”
Done in what Anderson calls a “rustic-modern” style, the renovation even earned a Ladysmith Heritage Award from the Ladysmith and District Historical Society, bringing it a long way from the down-on-its-heels property that Anderson came home to in 2019 after, admittedly, neglecting the property for a couple of decades after her grandmother died.
“I had so many offers to develop the property and I almost lost the property so many times to stupidity because people were offering to buy it. And, I thought about it a few times, but I’m glad I kept it,” Anderson said. “Now we’re just starting from scratch, really.”
Anderson said HGTV approached her about doing the show after The New York Times ran a piece about her rediscovering the Vancouver Island home under the headline “Pamela Anderson’s Garden of Eden.”
“They said, ‘This sounds like an incredible labour of love, we would love to do something with you.’ I said, ‘Sure, why not? That will also give me some resources to finish this project,’ ” said Anderson.
“So, we talked about how we could do that. I really wanted it to be sustainable with water catching. We have solar panels. We’re planting clover fields. Everything to kind of sustain water as climate change is upon us.”
Anderson is an outspoken vegan and animal-rights activist, so it is no surprise the garden is a big focal point on the property.
“It’s basically a garden from the top of the property to the ocean and I’ve just been learning as I go because I was not a gardener before this,” she said. “I planted my 5,000-square-foot vegetable garden that went completely crazy — like Jack and the Beanstalk.
“I am canning vegetables. I am pickling things. I’m just trying to keep up with the property. It’s amazing. It is such a bountiful, wonderful place. It keeps me busy. I’m mowing the lawns. I’m out in the garden. It’s the best workout.”
In the first episode, you meet Anderson’s parents, Barry and Carol, and the team that has been assembled to do the work. There is the designer, local contractor and the crew, which includes Dan Hayhurst, a local guy who became Anderson’s fourth husband in 2020. The marriage ended in January, according to various sources.
That chapter is another in the open book of a career and life that began when Anderson was discovered on the Jumbotron at a B.C. Lions game in the late 1980s. Her career took off when she was the centrefold in the February 1990 issue of Playboy.
Acting gigs, many, many more Playboy covers, activism, online businesses and, of course, headline-making marriages and relationships followed, as Anderson moved in and out of the entertainment news cycle for decades.
Most recently, Anderson has been back in the spotlight due to rave reviews for her turn last spring as Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway. She was also a topic of much conversation and consternation this year after Hulu delivered the limited series Pam & Tommy, which revisited the non-consensual distribution of Anderson’s and then-husband Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee’s sex tape in the mid-1990s.
With a lifetime of colourful stories and zeitgeist moments in her wake, the woman whose slow-motion run down a beach in Baywatch is a pop culture reference point doesn’t want to talk about her jam-packed past. Instead, she says her side of those stories and more will be delivered in a memoir due out Jan. 31, along with a pending Netflix documentary.
While a quick Google search will take you down the rabbit hole of Anderson’s very public life, there is one thing she thinks fans don’t know about her.
“I like to get my hands dirty,” said Anderson. “I like to get into the dirt. Run around barefoot. I’m in the ocean a lot. This is where I grew up and how I grew up.”
The show sets out to capture that as Anderson is involved in all the decision-making on the $750,000 — a number quoted in the first episode — renovation.
The design payoff in the first episode is seeing a dank laundry room transformed into a light, bright, feminine space where Anderson says she plans to listen to records and enjoy some wine as she does two of her favourite things: laundry and ironing.
“My kids say, ‘Mom, I know you want to be normal, but you’re not normal.’ But I’m trying,” Anderson says in the episode.
