How Accurate Is “Pam & Tommy”? You Might Be Surprised

It’s probably not surprising that this one is true. According to “USA Today,” Lee wrote in his memoir, “Tommy Land,” that he did, in fact, lick her face the night they met. “I grab my bottle of Cristal, slam the shot, and go over and sit right next to her,” he writes in his book. “I don’t say a word. I just, like, lick the side of her face.” This was after Anderson bought shots for the bar – just like in “Pam & Tommy.”

They did! “Pam & Tommy” is very accurate in Anderson and Lee’s origin story. They did meet and have a complete whirlwind of a romance, getting married on a beach in Cancun, Mexico, after just a few days together. Anderson even wore a white bikini, like Lily James does in the Hulu series.

While we can’t be certain exactly what Anderson and Lee did and didn’t know about each other when they got married, we do know that they didn’t know a whole lot. According to “USA Today,” the couple really did spend the flight home from Cancun asking each other mundane questions to get to know each other better.

There’s one particularly graphic scene in “Pam & Tommy” where Tommy (played by Sebastian Stan) has a conversation with his penis about being in love with Pamela. While his penis didn’t respond in the conversation in real life, Lee wrote in his memoir that he truly did have a bit of a pep talk with himself and little Tommy in the early days of his courtship. Producer Robert Siegel told “Variety” that the scene was inspired directly by Lee’s memoir.

“Pam & Tommy” shows Rand Gauthier (played by Seth Rogen) doing work on the couple’s Malibu, CA, mansion before getting fired for shoddy workmanship. When Rand comes back to the house later to pick up his tools, Tommy pulls a gun on him, telling him to leave. According to the real-life Gauthier’s retelling of the events to “Rolling Stone” in 2014, this truly did happen. “I was never really that popular with people,” he said. “But I had never been held at gunpoint. It screwed with my head.”

Gauthier told “Rolling Stone” that he worked alone in stealing the safe, throwing a white fur rug over himself to appear as Lee’s giant sheepdog if caught on camera. However, the safe was huge, and Lee didn’t think it was possible for one person to steal the safe alone. He says in his memoir, per “USA Today,” that it would have taken “a crane, a flatbed and a crew of guys.”

“Pam & Tommy” makes it seem like Gauthier had a really hard time actually selling the sex tape – and that’s exactly what happened back in the mid-’90s. Gauthier told “Rolling Stone” that he and Milton Ingley approached several porn distributors, but no one was interested in the tape because they knew it was stolen. Famed porn icon Ron Jeremy, who was offered the tape, told the magazine, “We passed. Porn was so strict and scary back in those days. If you’re f*cking, you better believe you gotta have a release.”