Pamela Anderson’s marriage to Kid Rock ended Borat.
In his book, Love, Pamela, the Bay Watch a falling alum recalls the wild rocket, real name Bob Ritchie, as well as the tumultuous end of their relationship. They met at a charity concert and were first together from 2001 to 2002 and then back together in 2006, but split four months after marriage.
The break-up – in which she claims the “Redneck Paradise” singer called her a “slut and worse” – came after she lashed out at playwright Sacha Baron Cohen Borat, released on November 3, 2006, at the home of then-Universal Studios president and COO Ron Meyers. Anderson recalled that it was a star-studded event with Steven Spielberg among the guests. Anderson said she didn’t tell Rock, whom she married that July, that she was in the movie.
“The screening … did not go well,” she wrote in her memoirs, which are now out. “I didn’t tell Bob that I was in the film, because I wanted to surprise him.” However, “I forgot the part in the movie that referred to the ‘sex tape'” – obviously referring to the home video she made with first husband Tommy Lee. “Bob stormed out, calling me a whore and worse. He was embarrassed, and had no idea how to respond.”
Anderson recalled guest Laird Hamilton yelling, amid the couple’s devastating blow, “Don’t be mad at Superwoman when she breaks her cape!” That didn’t help. Anderson said she “Bob went to his car,” but “he peeled off, 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 came home from the screening, he was angry “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.”
However, “we broke up” after the blowup and “I didn’t stay in touch with Bob.” The split was notoriously bitter. After she publicly revealed that she miscarried Rock’s child, he claimed she was lying.
Borat The Cohen star in 2019 spoke about the film that ended Anderson and Rock’s relationship, admitting that he thought it was a joke. He said he texted Anderson after Rock came out of the screening to see what he thought of the film. “She texted back, ‘He’s getting a divorce,'” 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 writing that their differences were “so obvious” from the start. However, after her turbulent marriage to Lee – which she divorced in 1998, but continued 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 he was in love with Anderson and wanted to marry her. “Tommy told him to get off *** – and that he would kill him,” she wrote. “But Bob and I started dating anyway. We broke up a few times because of Tommy’s interference or meddling, and I wasn’t so sure that I could take the next step. But in the end he found me . He was sexy, and his talent was captivating. He drew me in, and I was helpless in the face of his rock-star advances.”
The summer they married, Anderson was on a superyacht in Saint-Tropez with her sons and a friend when “Bob unexpectedly” showed up and jumped aboard. He proposed a few days later. Before they married, Anderson had a bachelorette party, thrown by LaChapelle’s “maid of dishonor,” who is gay, and attended by her “gorgeous, all-gay crew.” She said Rock sent her security guard with her to make sure she “made it back to Saint-Tropez in one piece.” She did, despite the wild pursuit of Las Vegas, and arrived at her wedding, on a funnel, with LaChapelle, wearing a captain’s hat.
She said Rock “didn’t appreciate my close relationship” with LaChapelle and “she also doesn’t believe David was really gay.” After the wedding, Anderson – who is LaChapelle’s muse – wanted to jump off the boat in her Heatherette wedding dress, and LaChapelle encouraged her. However, “Bob stopped me and said, ‘No! … I reluctantly chose to stick with my new husband,'” she wrote.
After the wedding, Anderson and his two sons “started spending more time in Detroit,” Rock’s hometown. They then had a bigger wedding, including musical performances by Bob Seger and Hank Williams Jr. She said they lived “a real rock-and-roll lifestyle, gritty and soulful.”
“Bob had given me and the two boys a lot,” she wrote, noting that “he was wonderful to them and had a young son of his own… 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 reminded her sons about living in Detroit and the younger Dylan had no memory of it. “We moved to Detroit at some point in our lives?” he asked, shocked.)
Anderson says their differences caught up with them early on and she wants to take time out and think. Whenever she did, he would show up and woo her back. When she decided she wanted to return to Malibu, Calif., Rock bought them a new home there. However, she wrote that the Borat screening was just before they moved in – and you know the rest.
The following September following their split, Anderson attended the 2007 MTV VMAs. Both Rock and Lee were there and they famously got into a physical altercation over her.
“Since he had bad luck, I was asked to present an award to Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards,” she wrote. “I saw Bob on the red carpet and he looked at me and said, ‘Look what the cat pulled in.’ Then I saw Tommy, he came in from another way and crawled in and took a seat and when I slid past him to sit down, Tommy pulled me into his lap… Bob saw the whole thing and was shaking from his seat After I presented the award to Kanye, Alicia Keys [performed and] Tommy and Bob dove into each other. Fists flew, and the whole thing ended up on live television. I walked out… It was a setup. MTV must have been very happy. 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 that he always wanted to be the biggest person with “disrespectful” Lee when he was married to Anderson and helping to raise their son. After the split, he claimed Lee called him from Anderson’s phone and made threats. Rock said he told him he was going down the next time he saw him. The next time they were in the same room happened to be the VMAs. Rock claimed that Lee started 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 was not clear what Lee said to Rock, but apparently, after his words, Rock hit the drummer … Rock’s face.”
Anderson has married three other men (only two legally – Rick Salomon and Dan Hayhurst) and has been single for the past year. She was busy promoting her memoirs, Love, Pamela, and a Netflix documentary, Pamela, a love story, both are out now.