Former “Baywatch” star Pamela Anderson doubled down on her eyebrow-raising comments about the #MeToo movement, saying that women should know better than to go into a hotel room alone.
Anderson sat down with journalist Ronan Farrow — who broke the story that took down former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and jump-started the #MeToo movement — for a profile piece that Interview Magazine published on Wednesday, and he asked whether she believed it was “healthy” to bring up that particular idea back in 2017.
“You told Megyn Kelly, ‘You know what you’re getting into when you go to a hotel room alone.’ Do you feel like that was a healthy thought to introduce into the dialogue at that point?” Farrow asked.
“I could even take it a step further,” was Anderson’s reply. “My mother would tell me — and I think this is the kind of feminism I grew up with — it takes two to tango … ‘If someone answers the door in a hotel robe and you’re going for an interview, don’t go in. But if you do go in, get the job.'”
“That’s a horrible thing to say but that’s how I was,” Anderson conceded, but went on to say that her own sense of self-worth had helped her to respond to situations differently than some other younger women in Hollywood might have.
“But I think a lot of people don’t have that or they weren’t taught that,” Anderson continued, saying that she was thankful for the #MeToo movement because she believed that it really had changed the dynamic.
Anderson had initially sparked backlash, as Farrow mentioned, after a 2017 interview with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly when she suggested that women should know better than to go alone to an audition in a hotel room.
“When I came to Hollywood, of course I had a lot of offers to do private auditions and things that made absolutely no sense,” Anderson told Kelly. “[It’s] just common sense: Don’t go into a hotel room alone. If someone answers the door in a bathrobe, you know, leave.”
The former Playboy playmate told Kelly that surviving sexual assault as a child may have been what made it easier for her to recognize the red flags — and had taught her never to put herself in that kind of situation again.