Pamela Anderson makes a surprising comeback in Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl

In 2022, the streaming service Hulu released the series "Pam & Tommy," a fictionalized account of the sex tape scandal that derailed Pamela Anderson's acting career in the late 1990s. Without her consent, the series mined one of the darkest moments of her life, leaving her feeling violated and exploited all over again.

Now, the former "Baywatch" star is telling her own story, and she says things are looking up. She released a memoir, "Love, Pamela," and a Netflix documentary detailing how she has reinvented herself as an activist, advocating for animal rights and issues like Julian Assange. She also made her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in "Chicago," with the internet dubbing her career resurgence the "Pamelaissance." Now residing in Canada with her grown children, everything seems possible, suggesting a brighter future for her. "I don't believe I'm done yet," she says in the documentary, hinting at more to come.

Still, Anderson's next move has surprised many, including herself: her first leading role in a feature film since the 1996 action movie "Barb Wire." In "The Last Showgirl," Anderson plays Shelly Gardner, a 57-year-old dancer performing in Le Razzle Dazzle, a Las Vegas revue that is being canceled after a thirty-year run. With this film, Anderson has earned her first Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations, marking a significant milestone in her career.

Directed by Gia Coppola ("Palo Alto"), the film boasts a strong cast, including Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelly's best friend Annette, Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song as fellow showgirls, and Dave Bautista as the gruff stage manager. Coppola had always envisioned Anderson as the perfect Shelly, and after Anderson's agent turned down the script, she sent it to Anderson's son, Brandon. Her persistence paid off. When Anderson finally read the script, she immediately seized the opportunity to play the dancer. "When I read it, I thought, 'This is what I've been waiting for my whole life. This is why I had the life I had'; I couldn't have played her this way if I hadn't gone through what I went through," Anderson told ABC National Radio's "The Screen Show."

Le Razzle Dazzle is based on the famous Las Vegas revue Jubilee!, which ended its thirty-year run in 2016. In its heyday, the spectacle featured more than 100 performers in elaborate, bejeweled costumes designed by legends Bob Mackie and Pete Menefee, which appear in the film. In "The Last Showgirl," the glory days when every casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip was packed are long gone. Attendance is dwindling, and Le Razzle Dazzle's days are numbered. It is being replaced by a new burlesque-inspired show, which Shelly dismissively calls a "dirty circus." Shelly sees Le Razzle Dazzle as part of an artistic tradition rooted in the culture of the Paris Lido, a homage to the famous Parisian venue that was synonymous with cabaret before it closed in 2022. Her daughter, Hannah (played by Billie Lourd), considers Le Razzle Dazzle to be a "stupid naked show," but Shelly corrects her: it's a "spectacular with naked dancing," she says. The distinction matters to Shelly, who remembers a time when Las Vegas showgirls were seen as movie stars. "We were the epitome of fashion and elegance," she tells her friends. "These costumes—they make you feel like you're walking out of the pages of Vogue."

Shelly has dedicated her life to Le Razzle Dazzle, but with little to show for it besides a dwindling paycheck, a failed marriage, and a strained relationship with her daughter, its closure leads the veteran dancer to a personal reckoning. Anderson believes Shelly's story will resonate with any woman who finds herself at a midlife crossroads. "It's a movie about second chances; it's about reinvention," she says. "I felt like there was a lot of room to work with Gia to create this vulnerable character." Anderson wanted to tell a story about the resilience behind the city's glitz and glamour. "I thought, this is an opportunity to get to know the women who hold up the rhinestones; the working-class people who make Vegas shine…those are the interesting stories," she said.

Filmed on location in Las Vegas, "The Last Showgirl" was made for $2 million in just 18 days. "For me, it was really important to make an intimate movie, to keep it small," Coppola says. "A lot of the crew were either family or close friends." Fortunately for Coppola (the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and niece of Sofia Coppola), filmmaking is a family affair. Her mother, Jacqui Getty, is the film's costume designer. Her cousins Robert Schwartzman and Matthew Shire are producers on the film, while another cousin, Jason Schwartzman, plays a casting director in Shelly's crucial audition scene. The script is adapted from a play written by Shire's wife, writer Kate Gersten, after she saw a performance of Jubilee! in Las Vegas. "She knows the theater world so well," Coppola says of Gersten, whose writing credits include the TV shows "The Good Place" and "Mozart in the Jungle."

Much of the film takes place backstage, in dressing rooms and the theater's cramped hallways and stairwells. "That's what I loved about the script—it felt like a very truthful reflection of backstage life," Coppola says. Anderson agrees. She says playing Roxie on Broadway felt like "warming up" for her role in "The Last Showgirl." "I experienced being surrounded by these people who have been in the show for 20 years and have this muscle memory…being able to talk about what they're having for dinner and then hearing their cue and going onstage and continuing their conversation when they get off." While films like Paul Verhoeven's 1995 movie "Showgirls" amplified the competition between performers, Anderson wanted to portray the intimacy and sisterhood she witnessed backstage. "It's easy to play catty (but) I think vulnerable and hopeful…and inspired is more watchable."