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There is perhaps no couple that defined the ’90s more than Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
Teasers for the controversial Hulu series, “Pam & Tommy,” starring Lily James as Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Lee, evoke the sex tape, tattoos and tumultuous love affair that defined an era. Let’s have a look at the birth charts of these two star crossed lovers to see how it all came to be and came to an end.
Sun square, worlds collide
Born July 1, 1967, Pamela Anderson, 54, is a caretaking Cancer sun with a bridge burning Aries moon. Conversely, Tommy Lee, 59, born Oct. 3, 1962 is a charming Libra sun with a swashbuckling Sagittarius moon. Pamela’s sun squares Tommy’s, a seriously challenging and volatile aspect. In astrology, the sun represents our essential selfhood. Libras like Tommy follow intellect, while Cancers like Pam are guided by intuition and emotion. The sun square aspect indicates that at their most essential, these two are wildly different human beings.
The upswing of the square-off is that all that tension makes for immediate attraction. The pair met when Anderson sent over a round of shots to Lee’s table, as reported by Rolling Stone. Lee, rolling balls on MDMA, thanked her for the gesture by licking the side of her face. Fast forward to Lee following/low-key stalking Anderson to a photo shoot in Mexico and marrying her a scant 96 hours later.
“Tommy and I started out having a very intense, fun, crazy relationship because we were two kids,” Anderson told Interview in 2016. “We were madly in love. It wasn’t like drugs or alcohol or anything like that. We were both just really passionate about life.” This square is the mark of the can’t live with them, can’t live without them, sort of love story. These two are drawn to each other but not destined to stay together as their only common ground is a mattress.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the stars
Squaring Off
To add fuel to an already combustible dumpster fire, Anderson and Lee have multiple squares within their synastry chart including Mercury square Mercury. In astrology, Mercury is the planet of mental processing and verbal communication. This aspect indicates that not only are these two crazy kids not on the same page, they barely speak the same language. This difference can be a source of curiosity at first but will eventually build to flat out friction. In the 2001 Mötley Crüe memoir “The Dirt,” Lee writes, “We had a huge blowup because, with everything unraveling at once, we both became extra sensitive to each other’s slightest change in mood. If one person said or did something wrong, the other one bristled with hate and resentment.” Sounds like the sharp edges and paper cut to the soul energy of a Mercury square Mercury.
These two are drawn to each other but not destined to stay together as their only common ground is a mattress.
Further evidence of the pair’s communication differences can be found in their respective responses to the release of their sex tape. Anderson has been an outspoken critic of the production and consumption of pornography. “Simply put, we must educate ourselves and our children to understand that porn is for losers,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, “a boring, wasteful and dead-end outlet for people too lazy to reap the ample rewards of healthy sexuality.” Taking a different route is Lee, who paid homage to himself, his sex tape and the infamy of his genitalia in the 2000 Methods of Mayhem bop, “Get Naked,” featuring Lil’ Kim, George Clinton and Fred Durst.
Opposites react
The square dance/face off continues with Anderson and Lee’s Venus square Venus and Mars square Mars.
Venus is the planet of love, attraction and attachments. Lee’s Venus is in intense, obsessive Scorpio while Anderson’s is in high flare, affection hungry Leo. Anderson described Lee and in turn, the extreme nature of Venus in Scorpio in an Interview cover story. “With Tommy, it’s always all or nothing,” she explained. “Any time anyone is out of his life, he tries with everything in his power to hate that person… I know the pattern. I see it. And that’s his protection.”
Both Leo and Scorpio are fixed signs, meaning they are less likely to alter course or concede when it comes to love. Habits are hard to break and patterns difficult to shake for these two, exhibited in an on again off again relationship, marked by divorce, repeated reconciliation, and continued ire.
Love is war
In astrology, Mars represents our will. Named for the god of war, the position of this planet indicates ambition, sexuality and our response to conflict. Lee has Mars in the emotionally sunburned sign of Cancer. Mars is in fall in Cancer, meaning it is uncomfortable, and has difficulty expressing itself in a clear or constructive manner. This placement indicates Lee is at the mercy of his own moods, often repressing them to the point of explosion, an unmooring quality that explains his substance abuse issues and allegedly aggressive reactions to discord. The energy here is ‘I am hurt and everyone must suffer.”
When a planet is in fall it is an invitation to master the area of life it affects. For Lee, that area is emotional response and conflict resolution. While he served jail time for a domestic abuse charge related to an altercation with Anderson, it seems Lee took this invitation to heart.
“I was able to order three books every 10 days on Amazon.com,” he wrote in “The Dirt.” “I picked up books on the three things I most wanted to improve: relationships, parenting and spirituality. I put tai chi diagrams up on my walls, learned about pressure points underneath my eyes that release stress, and became an expert on self-help books and Buddhism. I was determined to give myself a full-blown psychological, physical and musical tuneup.”
In addition to the most famous sex tape in the world, the volatile union of Anderson and Lee produced two children, sons Brandon, 25 and Dylan, 24. In a 2018 blog post titled “Alcoholism Is the Devil,” written after an altercation between Lee and Brandon, Anderson called her former flame, “The definition of narcissist/sociopath.” Blessedly for all parties, Lee got sober in 2019 and reconciled with his son, demonstrating that the affliction of this Mars placement is a challenge that can be met rather than a fate that must be accepted.
Anderson has Mars in Libra, another uncomfortable place for the red planet to reside. In the sign of partnership, Mars requires another person to be activated. At best this need manifests as great collaborative potential, at worst it makes for a passive aggressive tendency to provoke others into fulfilling a need rather than clearly communicating it. Mars is in detriment in Libra, indicating that Anderson struggles to establish boundaries and confront challenges head-on. As Lee writes of his former flame, “As much as I loved Pamela, she had a problem dealing with things. If something wasn’t right in her life, she’d rather get rid of it than take the time to work on it or fix it.”
Past, present, future
Prior to his marriage to Anderson, Lee was wed to fellow Libra Heather Locklear while Anderson was tangled up with Poison lead singer, Pisces Bret Michaels, with whom she also recorded a sex tape. Post divorce, Anderson went on to wed Kid Rock, fellow sex tape star Rick Salomon (twice), producer Jon Peters for 12 days, and most recently Canadian handyman turned bodyguard turned ex-husband number five, Dan Hayhurst.
While a reconciled romance seems unlikely for Pam & Tommy, we can console ourselves with the knowledge that for a shining moment, their stars collided long enough to give live birth to the modern age, and thanks to Hulu, we can see how the two burned bright, and ultimately, out on each other.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.
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