“I wouldn’t have been able to play her if I didn’t live the life that I had”: Pamela Anderson on The Last Showgirl

Pamela Anderson’s voice carries a calmness that comes after the storm, which stands in direct opposition to the girlish, frantic ramblings of Shelley, her on-screen counterpart in The Last Showgirl. Reflecting on her involvement in the project, she shares its sweet and remarkable origin story: the script came to her via her son, delivered to her quiet vegetable farm in British Columbia at Gia Coppola’s request after sending the script directly to Anderson’s agent, who initially rejected it within the hour.
The production itself was an intense whirlwind, shot in just 18 days this January. Anderson recalls the logistical chaos: “Jamie Lee Curtis’s scenes came first because she had to go.” Fittingly, the film’s final scene was the last they shot – an emotional finishing touch to the whirlwind process. Anderson admits to being “terrified” to meet Curtis. “She was changing colours before my eyes,” laughs Anderson, and revealed that her anxiety melted when Curtis, fresh from her third spray tan, took Anderson by the shoulders at their first table read and told her, “I did this for you.”
Curtis’s fearless presence, Anderson says, set the tone for the movie. She praises her co-star as a champion for women and lauds the features’s multi-dimensional exploration of different generations of women. But Anderson also acknowledges the blurred lines between herself and Shelley, particularly when discussing Billie Lourd, her on-screen daughter. Lourd, the real-life daughter of the late Carrie Fisher, offered Anderson a poignant mirror. “As the child of an actress who was sexualised by the media,” Anderson reflects, “you see the hurt it causes. You’ll face your adult children one day and beg for their forgiveness.”
Despite her decades of pop-culture ubiquity, Anderson feels she’s only now beginning her career in earnest. “I feel like it’s the start,” she says, describing how she was able to put her passion to use for the first time in Coppola’s film. “The choreography of putting the costume on, the order of changes were so precise,” Anderson says about the immersive process behind The Last Showgirl, divulging that the costumes bore women’s name tags as they came from real dressing rooms in Las Vegas, where the film was shot. The production made use of actual backstage spaces – cramped, chaotic and authentic. The Rio Hotel and Casino, where much of the movie was filmed, was undergoing renovation at the time, adding to its raw, lived-in aesthetic. Anderson loved the setting’s rough edges, appreciating how the story depicted a working-class Las Vegas. “It’s like being on the moon,” she muses about the surreal otherworldliness of the city’s underbelly that’s captured on screen.
One of Anderson’s most interesting anecdotes is her deliberate decision to avoid mirrors during filming. “I never looked in the mirror when I got ready,” she confesses, “I didn’t want to bring insecurities that weren’t in the film.” Her commitment to authenticity – both to the character and to herself – shines through as she reflects on the parallels between her life and Shelley’s. “I wouldn’t have been able to play her if I didn’t live the life that I had,” she admits. And it’s this delicate balance – maintaining a clear boundary between herself and Shelley while fully embracing how her own experiences seep into the role – that gives her performance its depth and complexity.
Christina Yang
The Last Showgirl is released nationwide on 28th February 2025.
Watch the trailer for The Last Showgirl here:
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