Pamela Anderson is set to return to the stage in a production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
The 57-year-old Baywatch star made her Broadway debut three years ago when she appeared as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago.
The Williamstown Theatre Festival takes place in Williamstown, Massachusetts from July 17 to August 3.
Anderson has been cast opposite Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who played Lyle Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The play, which also stars Whitney Peak (Hocus Pocus 2), will be directed by Dustin Wills and has an overall ensemble of 15 actors.
According to the festival’s official synopsis: “The Camino Real is a dead end, a police state in an imagined Latin-Mediterranean-American country, and an inescapable condition.”
Characters “from history and literature such as Don Quixote, Casanova, and Camille inhabit this phantasmagoric plaza where corruption and alienation have nearly destroyed the human spirit.”
Last year, Anderson attracted critical acclaim and awards buzz for her role in Gia Coppola’s movie The Last Showgirl, which told the story of a veteran dancer in Las Vegas named Shelly (Anderson) on the verge of retirement.
Anderson’s career renaissance has come after the most challenging period of her life was dramatized in the series Pam & Tommy, which recounted her relationship with her ex-husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, whom she divorced in 1998 when Lee was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting her.
Anderson recalled in January finding out about the Hulu series – which she says was made without her permission – while she was working on her own Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, which was released around the time of her memoir Love Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth.
“I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t have any involvement,” she said of the Hulu series. “No one called me, which was so strange, and that was hurtful.”
She went on to say that she regarded The Last Showgirl as the “best payback” because she could celebrate getting recognition for her own work, and not for portrayals of her personal life.
“I mean, it’s just one of those things. It happened and now I’m here, and so this is the best payback … I’m being seen and recognized for my work and not these tawdry moments,” she said.
“I don’t dwell on it, but it was kind of a strange thing to pick a very terrible time in my life and make entertainment, and people were nominated for Emmys and all sorts of stuff,” she added.
“And that’s why I was laughing with someone the other day – Pete Hammond was telling me, ‘All these people have won awards basically playing you, but not you’… I guess they did it better than me.”
Later this year, Anderson will also be seen in the Naked Gun reboot alongside Liam Neeson.
