Here's What Happened to Tommy Lee After His Sex Tape Leaked
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Warning: The following contains spoilers for Hulu’s Pam and Tommy.
After a four-day, drug-riddled, not-so-private Mexico tryst, Tommy Lee, founder and drummer for the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, wed Pamela Anderson, model, Baywatch actor, and apparent love of Tommy’s life.
That was 1995. Two years later, a tape recording of the couple would appear across computer screens worldwide. It would be one of the earliest celebrity sex tapes in the history of the internet. And it would, according to a Rolling Stone article years later, help cement [Lee’s] legacy, letting the world know he had one of the biggest dicks in rock & roll.”
Of course, the intention of the video tape leak was to humiliate Lee. Rand Gauthier, Lee’s former electrician who had been fired by Lee during a renovation on his house, claims to have stolen the tape by himself. He burglarized the Lee/Anderson residence in 1995 and stole a safe containing valuables. It also held the tape—a homemade recording of the couple having sex.
Gauthier promptly sought distribution for the tape and would later sell copies online. The tape was later streamed online in 1997. Lee was incensed. A year later, the tape appeared legally on shelves. While Lee and Anderson have both denied profiting off the tape, some believe there was a deal made that would allow them to share in the tape’s revenue.
And in some ways, Lee did profit off the tape, if only by elevating his rock and roll celebrity.
Who is Tommy Lee?
Thomas Lee Bass was born in Greece, shortly after which his father moved the family to California. Lee dropped out of high school to perform music and later met bassist Nikki Sixx while performing the L.A. circuit. The two would add more members, later forming the band Mötley Crüe.
The band would go on to release several albums in the 1980s, becoming one of the biggest heavy metal and hard rock bands of the decade.
Lee had already been married twice when he met Anderson in 1995.
Is Pam and Tommy based on a true story?
The Hulu series notes that the story is taken from Amanda Chicago Lewis’ Rolling Stone article, titled “Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape.”
The article first appeared in 2014 and recounted the history of the tape’s dissemination, from a home robbery perpetrated by Tommy Lee’s former electrician Rand Gauthier to computer screens across the world.
The article’s main hook, as is Hulu’s series:
“The tape took two years to go from bootleg to viral, and when it did it made an estimated $77 million in less than 12 months – and that’s just on legitimate sales. So how did the person who stole the safe manage to evade the police, the lawyers, the media and the biker gangs, but never see a cent? This is the story of a man who staked his livelihood on a video in the hopes that it would save him. Instead he watched his life fall apart as his greed destroyed nearly every shred of the happiness he’d carved out for his adult self.”
Read: The full true story behind Pam and Tommy.
While some details have been changed from the article (and the record), the premise and outcomes were real.
Are Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson still together?
The couple divorced in 1998. Months before, Lee was arrested for assaulting Anderson. They remarried ten years later in 2008, but were then divorced for a second and final time in 2010.
Where is Tommy Lee now?
In 2019, Lee married Brittany Furlan. It was Lee’s fourth marriage.
He is 59 and has two children, both with Anderson.
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