In her book, Love, Pamela, the Baywatch alum recalls falling for the wild rocker, real name Bob Ritchie, as well as the messy ending of their relationship. They met at a charity concert and were first together from 2001 to 2002 and then got back together in 2006, but split four months after marrying.
The breakup — during which she claims the “Redneck Paradise” singer called her a “whore and worse” — took place after a screening of Sacha Baron Cohen‘s mockumentary Borat, which was released on Nov. 3, 2006, at the home of then-Universal Studios president and COO Ron Meyers’s house. Anderson recalled it being a star-studded event with Steven Spielberg among the guests. Anderson said she didn’t tell Rock, whom she had married that July, that she was in the movie.
“The screening … didn’t go well,” she wrote in her memoir, which is out now. “I didn’t tell Bob I was in the movie, because I wanted to surprise him.” However, “I forgot about the part in the film that referenced the ‘sex tape'” — referring of course to the home video she made with first husband Tommy Lee. “Bob stormed out, calling me a whore and worse. He was embarrassed, and his reaction was not thought through.”
Anderson recalled guest Laird Hamilton yelling, amid the couple’s nasty blowup, “Don’t get mad at Superwoman when she busts out her cape!” That didn’t help. Anderson said she “chased Bob to his car,” but “he peeled out, leaving me there alone. I turned back and apologized, then asked if anyone could give me a ride home.”
Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character was obsessed with Anderson:
When Anderson got home from the screening, an enraged “Bob was smashing a photo on the wall. He said he was sick of waking up to a picture of me and [her famed photographer pal] David LaChapelle every day. But it wasn’t me and David — it was Marilyn Monroe and Bert Stern.”
Nonetheless, “we broke up” after the blowup and “I didn’t stay in touch with Bob.” The split was famously bitter. After she publicly revealed she suffered a miscarriage with Rock’s child, he claimed she was lying.
Borat star Cohen talked in 2019 about his film ending Anderson and Rock’s relationship, admitting he thought it was a joke. He said he texted Anderson after Rock stormed out of the screening to see what he thought of the film. “She texted back, ‘He’s getting divorced,'” he claimed she said. “I was like, ‘Why?’ And she goes, ‘The movie.’ And I thought it was a joke.”
In Anderson’s book, she admitted wrote that their “differences were so apparent” from the start. However, after her turbulent marriage to Lee — whom she divorced in 1998, but continued to see on and off for years — she was looking for stability for her two young sons: Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee.
Anderson wrote that Rock called Lee to tell him that he was in love with Anderson and wanted to marry her. “Tommy told him to f*** off — and that he’d kill him,” she wrote. “But Bob and I started dating anyway. We broke up a few times due to Tommy’s interference or meddling, and I wasn’t so sure I could take that next step. But eventually he got to me. He was sexy, and his talent was seductive. He lured me in, and I was helpless in the face of his rock-star advances.”
The summer they married, Anderson was on a super-yacht in Saint-Tropez with her sons and a friend when “Bob arrived unexpectedly” and hopped aboard. He proposed a few days later. Before they wed, Anderson had a bachelorette party, thrown by “maid of dishonor” LaChapelle, who is gay, and attended by her “gorgeous, all-gay crew.” She said Rock sent his security guard with her to ensure she made “it back to Saint-Tropez in one piece.” She did, despite wild Las Vegas exploits, and arrived to her wedding, on a waverunner, with LaChapelle, wearing a captain’s hat.
She said Rock “didn’t appreciate my close relationship” with LaChapelle and “also didn’t believe David was really gay.” After the nuptials, Anderson — who is LaChapelle’s muse — wanted to jump off the boat in her Heatherette wedding dress, and LaChapelle urged her along. However, “Bob stopped me and said, ‘No! … I reluctantly chose to obey my new husband,” she wrote.
After the wedding, Anderson and her two sons “started spending more time in Detroit,” Rock’s hometown. They had a bigger wedding there, including musical performances by Bob Seger and Hank Williams Jr. She said they lived “a true rock-and-roll lifestyle, gritty and soulful.”
“Bob had taken on a lot with me and the two boys,” she wrote, noting “he was really great to them and had a young son himself… There were always adventures [for the kids]. They rode dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and horses… The boys loved Bob.” (In Anderson’s Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, she reminisced with her sons about living in Detroit and youngest Dylan had no memory of it. “We moved to Detroit at a point in our lives?” he asked, shocked.)
Anderson says their differences soon caught up with them and she’d leave to take time away and think. Whenever she did, he’d show up and woo her back. When she decided she wanted to return to Malibu, Calif., Rock bought them a new house there. However, she wrote that just before they moved in was the Borat screening — and you know the rest.
The following September after their split, Anderson attended the 2007 MTV VMAs. Rock and Lee were both there and famously got into a physical altercation over her.
“As bad luck had it, I was asked to present an award to Kanye West at MTV’s Video Music Awards,” she wrote. “I saw Bob on the red carpet and he looked at me and said, ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’ Then I saw Tommy. He entered from another way kind of sneaking in and taking a seat and when I slipped past him to sit down, Tommy pulled me onto his lap… Bob saw the whole thing and was fuming from his seat across from us. After I presented the award to Kanye, Alicia Keys [performed and] Tommy and Bob dove at each other. Fists were flying, and the whole thing ended up on live TV. I walked out… It was a setup. MTV must have been thrilled. I told the press waiting outside that we were bamboozled. Boys will be boys.”
Kid Rock, who was cited by police for misdemeanor battery for the fight, later discussed the incident, while testifying in an unrelated trial. He said he was always trying to be the bigger person with “disrespectful” Lee when he was married to Anderson and helping raise her sons. After the split, he claimed Lee called him from Anderson’s phone and made threats. Rock said he told him that the next time he saw him, it was going down. The next time they were in the same room happened to be the VMAs. Rock claimed Lee started it by coming over to him and sitting next to him.
According to an MTV News story at the time, eyewitnesses claimed Lee “jawed at Rock” when he walked by. “It wasn’t clear exactly what Lee said to Rock, but apparently after his words, Rock slapped the drummer… Lee, one eyewitness said, attempted to fight back but, before he was able to land a blow, was punched in the face by Rock.”
Anderson went on to marry three more men (only two legally — Rick Salomon and Dan Hayhurst) and has been single for the last year. She’s been busy promoting her memoir, Love, Pamela, and the Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, which are both out now.