Gia Coppola Cast Her ‘Last Showgirl’ Star Pamela Anderson After Seeing Her Documentary ‘Pamela, a Love Story’

When filmmaker Gia Coppola set about casting the lead of her third film, “The Last Showgirl,” finding her titular Las Vegas showgirl initially posed quite a conundrum. Coppola’s film follows Shelly, a longtime performer whose entire life is thrown into disarray when her show, the last of its kind on The Strip, is set to close. It’s a deeply felt character study about a singular woman, a part that required old-school glamour and hard-won smarts.

“I couldn’t really envision who was right for the role of Shelly. I kind of would think of Marilyn Monroe or actors that were no longer present, no one else really felt right,” Coppola said during a Sunday evening post-screening Q&A in New York City. (As the film gears up for its release next month, we’ll have more interviews with the team behind it coming.)

And then she found the 2013 Netflix documentary “Pamela, a Love Story,” which reorients our understanding of Pamela Anderson. The Ryan White film sets the record straight on many things in Anderson’s life; fleshing out the icon for those who may know nothing beyond “Baywatch.” On the heels of the series “Pam & Tommy,” White’s film provides another vivid version of the real Anderson. It certainly grabbed Coppola.

“And then I came across her documentary, and I just could see so many parallels of Shelly, but also I could see this artist that was so creative and so knowledgeable of art and philosophy and just the way she approached life,” the director said. “And how vulnerable she was, not really wearing makeup in the documentary, so I could see that this was a person who was fearless. I just really wanted to collaborate with her. I could see her hunger to kind of express her talents in a dramatic way.”

It wasn’t quite that easy, however, as when Coppola attempted to get the Kate Gersten-penned script to the star, she hit a fast roadblock. “I was eager to meet her,” Coppola said. “But I got turned down within an hour [of reaching out to her team about the part], which wasn’t from her. So I had to persevere and find alternate routes [to get to her].”

Coppola laughed and turned to Anderson, “It was really fun when we did connect because I was selling myself to you, and you were very excited at selling yourself to me.” The end result, co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, and Billie Lourd, speaks for itself: the film was positively reviewed out of its TIFF premiere, including many accolades for Anderson, and is poised for a December release. Documentaries: a good thing!

Roadside Attractions will release “The Last Showgirl” in Los Angeles on Friday, December 13 with a national release to follow on Friday, January 10.