‘I am a work in progress’: Pamela Anderson on restoring her BC home and herself | Radio-Canada News

Model, actress and environmental activist Pamela Anderson is on a rehabilitation mission.

Reached at her home in Ladysmith, British Columbia, she says the goal is to renovate the six-acre Vancouver Island property where she spent her early years and now hopes to become a multi-generational haven for herself, his parents and sons. .

That’s the subject of his new HGTV Canada reality show, Pamela’s Garden of Edenwhich premiered on Thursday.

At the same time, the Hollywood star says she was hit with a rush of soul-searching: While at the property, she wrote a memoir slated for release in late January, and she’s about to release a Netflix documentary about his life.

Even though large-scale home renovations are a work in progress, “I’m a work in progress,” Anderson says.

“Coming back here was really empowering. For me, it’s very emotional,” Anderson said of returning to the roots of a childhood she described as difficult.

“When I got home, I think I wasn’t as happy as usual. I came home to really deal with some things. There are some things in your life that you just put aside, and it was so comforting for me to come home, and it took me a while to realize what I was doing to myself.

From Hollywood to home

Further details of her early life and career as a colorful celebrity will be revealed in future memoir and streaming projects, she said, acknowledging that the recent reset of small-town life is a far cry from gripping tabloid exploits from its 90s heyday.

“I had never flown before when I left this island. You know, I left the island, and I went to Vancouver, then I moved to LA, then I did around the world and the south of France for a year before moving,” says Anderson, who rose to fame as a Playboy pin-up and Baywatch television star.

“I was restless when I was here. And I had to learn to be comfortable, just relax and enjoy and put all my creative juices into this, make it an art project, listen to other people’s ideas .”

Anderson says she bought the property about 30 years ago from her grandmother, believing she “just needed some Canadian roots” and would move there one day.

It would take longer than expected, she hints in a first episode that briefly hints at years of “busy” life in Los Angeles, a busy career and multiple high-profile marriages.

She says it was “heartbreaking” at first to return to the sprawling waterfront property, which includes three buildings known as the roadhouse, the boathouse and the cabin.

“I felt like this place was like a broken heart, that I really had to turn around.”

Living that island life

These days, Anderson says she relishes the new creative tasks that occupy her time — painting, painting, pottery and canning vegetables among them — while discovering her personal design style.

She acknowledges a lot of trial and error – and perhaps conflict – over design choices, laughing at the folly of inviting cameras to watch her “blend into the doorknob to put on your door” .

“I’m not perfect. Some ideas are really bad, and some ideas don’t work, and some things I’ve fixed and fixed, and I’m wasting a lot of money fixing these problems,” the man says. 55 years old. -old, who started the adventure with a budget of $750,000.

The crew, too, is a collection of “misfits,” she adds.

“I wanted guys [for whom] it’s their second or third chance in life. I wanted to bring people here who weren’t, you know, perfect people. I wanted everyone to have a fun project to do as some sort of healing place.

She introduces one of them in the first episode as her husband, revealing little about their dating other than that he’s “a normal guy, which is nice”.

Anderson declines to say more over the phone, and a spokesperson for HGTV Canada later said the couple filed for separation in January 2022.

A family matter

The show gives us a window into Anderson’s goofy side as she jokes around with the crew and her well-established love of nature as she chats about local wildlife and walks barefoot on the beach in dresses wide and flowing.

It’s a far cry from the domed, bobbed version of Anderson that made her a beauty icon, and she agrees. But it’s genuine, she adds, and it’s in part an overture to her two adult sons, who urged her to do the show because they saw a disconnect between her public persona and the woman who ‘they know.

“My sons were (like), ‘Mom, people don’t understand who you are,'” she says of Brandon Lee, a producer on the show, and Dylan Lee.

“It doesn’t really bother me – I’m me. But it bothers them.”

Anderson is happy to say her sons are spending “more and more” time at the property as the renovation unfolds, and she boasts of personal triumphs, including a 460-square-foot garden bursting with produce.

The “heart and soul of the property” is a rose garden featuring Anderson’s favorite hot pink variety.

“I had it in all my flower arrangements all over the world. Wherever I was, whoever I was with, I always knew it was my rose,” Anderson says.

Pamela’s Garden of Eden airs Thursdays on HGTV Canada and airs Fridays on StackTV.