Pam and Tommy true story: Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee scandal explained

The creative team behind the series have said they have great sympathy for Anderson, whose career was severely impacted by the incident, while Lee experienced a resurgence in popularity.

Downton Abbey alum Lily James dons extensive make-up and prosthetics to transform into the former Baywatch star, leading the Pam and Tommy cast opposite The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Sebastian Stan as the Mötley Crüe musician.

The series also stars the likes of Seth Rogen and Orange is the New Black star Taylor Schilling.

Read on for your full briefing on the Pam and Tommy true story, ahead of the show's streaming premiere in February.

Pam and Tommy true story explained

Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee got married in 1995, sharing a lavish and luxurious lifestyle as two of the biggest names in entertainment at the time; Anderson was a series regular on the hit series Baywatch, where she played lifeguard CJ Parker, while Lee was the drummer in Mötley Crüe, a band which had amassed record sales topping 20 million.

They had hired electrician Rand Gauthier to work on renovating their mansion, but after weeks of work he claimed that he was suddenly sacked without pay for what the couple deemed to be shoddy work. He told Rolling Stone in 2014 that when he returned to their home later to retrieve tools that had been left behind, Lee threatened him with a shotgun and ordered him to leave immediately.

The unpleasant encounter angered Gauthier, who spent that summer plotting to burgle the safe stored in their garage, which he believed to be filled with expensive jewellery and guns. In late October, he committed the break-in, climbing over the fence in the dead of night and using a fur rug to disguise himself on CCTV as a dog they owned. Seriously.

As he was the one who had installed the property's security cameras, he was also able to disable them with relative ease. Less easy was transporting the massive safe out of the mansion and down the driveway to his truck, with there being several conflicting reports regarding how exactly Gauthier managed it – he claims to have heaved the 226kg weight off a U-Haul dolly himself.

The thief had left the garage exactly how he'd found it, meaning Anderson and Lee did not become aware of the burglary until months later. By that time, Gauthier had broken it open and found a treasure trove that included a Rolex, a gold-and-diamond Cartier watch and other items of precious jewellery. Alongside them, was a tape cassette.

The 54-minute video recorded private time the couple had spent together, including a sexual encounter. Gauthier was stunned by the footage and brought it to the attention of Milton Ingley, the boss at the porn studio where he was currently employed. The duo sensed an opportunity to make a lot of money, creating several copies of the tape and destroying the original to cover their tracks.

To their frustration, no distributors wanted anything to do with the footage as most twigged immediately that it was stolen goods, causing Ingley to turn to a less reputable source for support. It was gangster Louis 'Butchie' Peraino who forked over $50,000 (that's approximately $91,000 in today's money) to fund manufacturing and distribution costs via a simple website.

Of course, the internet was a new concept at that time, meaning far less people were online and fewer still were actually tech-savvy. Nevertheless, the anonymity it provided made it the best option for getting the tape out there – and it needed to sell like hotcakes given that Peraino was expecting interest on his loan and a cut of the profits.

Three websites contained instructions on where to send money to acquire the tape of Pam and Tommy, with the product priced at a steep $59.95 ($109 when adjusted for inflation). But cracks in the business plan were already starting to show, with another staff member at Ingley's porn studio getting hold of the tape and selling his own copies on the side.

Whispers that the intimate footage was doing the rounds started to gain traction by the end of the year and the couple realised their safe was missing at the start of 1996. From then, things got a lot more difficult for Gauthier and Ingley, as their victims hired a private investigator to look into the missing tape, while members of a biker gang made regular visits to their studio looking for them.

The extra heat reduced Gauthier to a paranoid insomniac, taking refuge round a friend's house for almost a year. Ultimately, no amount of threats to the duo responsible could stop the continued spread of the tape, which had been reproduced countless times by then, with men's magazine Penthouse being the first established publication to admit to having a copy.

The frightening realisation prompted Anderson and Lee to file a $10 million civil lawsuit against every single person they believed to have bought the tape, with Ingley and Gauthier among those named. For Ingley, enough was enough; he fled to Amsterdam to put some distance between himself and his problems, but continued advertising the tape on adult websites.

However, sales were dropping by the end of 1996, as a number of people who had bought the tape began copying it and selling it on themselves, diluting the profits that Ingley stood to make. He was forced to sell his studio and equipment to stay afloat, halting further orders of the Pam and Tommy tape in spring 1997 in the hopes of preventing more copycats from emerging.

As a result, Peraino was soon out of packet and, unsurprisingly, wasn't too happy about it. He initially believed that Gauthier was hiding a stash of money somewhere for his exiled boss, but a failed interrogation convinced him otherwise. Still, he was not the type to simply forgive and forget, meaning Gauthier was tasked with working off his debt as a collector for the gangster.

Ingley disregarded an injunction issued against him and in September 1997 sent out the backlog of orders that had built up since he put his business on hiatus earlier in the year. A little over a month later, one found its way to tech entrepreneur Seth Warshavsky, who announced plans to broadcast the video on his pornographic website, Club Love.

However, he didn't expect that he would be allowed to go ahead with this plan, assuming instead that he would be hit with a lawsuit, but one that would bring with it some valuable publicity. To his surprise, a judge refused to issue an injunction against him and the five-hour looped stream went ahead. At this point, Pam and Tommy felt that the battle had been lost.

They settled up with Warshavsky, whose lawyer had prepared a contract allowing a broad release for the footage, although Pam and Tommy claim they didn't realise this included physical copies. Thus, from 25th November 1997, the tape was available legitimately via Club Love subscriptions, while a deal with Vivid Entertainment sent it into adult video stores across the United States.

Ingley and Gauthier, the men who kick-started this troubling saga, were ultimately left with nothing from the tape they had thought would make them a fortune. Meanwhile, web and pay-per-view rights for the video lapsed in 2011, which some argue signals a change in attitudes around the stolen footage and the individuals featured therein.

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Pam and Tommy premieres on Wednesday 2nd February 2022 on Disney Plus and with new episodes released weekly on Wednesdays. You can sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year.

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