On the latest episode of the Allison Interviews Podcast host and entertainment journalist, Allison Kugel sits down with legendary screen icon Pam Grier for an unfiltered interview. Pam discusses her famous ex’s and her current love life, surviving multiple rapes and sexual assaults, the de-glamming of Pamela Anderson, the late Malcolm Jamal Warner, her bold sexuality in films like Foxy Brown, turning her autobiography "Foxy" into a biopic, and her newest project, Pam Grier’s Soul Flix.
On Pamela Anderson stripping away her sex symbol image and their parallel journeys:
“Sometimes you catch up to yourself. And I think that every day that you’ve been someone else’s idol, someone else’s image, and you’ve been feeding that; one day you wake up and go, ‘Who is that?’ For me, I wake up with my pups all over me, there’s tea percolating, and I’m not thinking about the glam, because it is work. You are projecting and promoting a little bit of fantasy for people, and they don’t want to see you. When people saw Pam without her makeup, an not Baywatch or [being] the wife of a rock star, Tommy Lee, they went, ‘Wow! She really is human, isn’t she?’ It’s levels, that people get to see. It’s hard, because people can be exhausting. They want to know [about you], they want you to be in their life, they want you to adopt them. [Pamela Anderson] was a symbol who was constantly pulled on ”
On her iconic film, Foxy Brown, being a statement of female empowerment:
“That [character] was created by the artists that were around me. I allowed them to use me as a canvas. The image for urban is different from rural (where Grier grew up). The women I knew and grew up with (in Colorado and Wyoming), just the way we dressed naturally, could be deemed as sexy. I loved the fact that they gave me an urban appeal; which was costume, which was fantasy. Foxy Brown was written for female empowerment. You can’t walk into a business meeting with a man and expect to close a deal if you’re not feminine, sorry. You can see that today, fifty years later. Last year was the fiftieth anniversary of Foxy Brown. It was trying to make women feel, ‘I’m okay, I can do it, I'ma stand up to you.’”
“Women hadn’t been allowed to be best for a very long time. They say, ‘We kicked the door down.’ No. Sometimes we had to crawl, but you better have something that’s logical. I’m more scientific. Popular Mechanics is my magazine, over VOGUE (laughs). I saw what my great great grandmother had to do to keep her farm in Wyoming. She was a single mom. But feisty, Victorian, lace, corset. Her femininity garnered attention, and garnered men’s respect. It shocked them and they said, ‘Where did you learn that from?’ She said, ‘Well, I had to, or we’d lose the farm.’”
“The Goal of Foxy Brown was to establish the acceptance of women standing up for themselves. I was stepping into a radical position. I’m pretty, and I'ma be pretty. I'ma fox it out! Some might think the nudity was gratuitous, but it was strategy. That’s the only way you can deal in a man’s world, while swimming in this river of manhood and trying to take down the [bad guy]. Wanna catch a snake? Give him his food source; that’s beauty. The game’s over. That’s how you catch men.”
“We’ve come a long way. It would take men like my stepdad and other people saying, ‘I’m so glad you took over and did things; fixing the roof, cutting the grass, you did things that I was opposed to, and I apologize.’ It took years for the men in my family to recognize and appreciate my determination.”
On how her famous ex’s dealt with her strength and independence:
“With Kareem [Abdul Jabbar], he said he would put me through Medical School and that I would be at home. I said, ‘How could I be at home and have as many children as you want, and go to university? That’s not going to work. You’re not telling me the truth. I know some things, and that you’re not telling me the truth.’”
“Freddie Prinze [Sr.] loved it. He loved what I did, and he said, ‘Any time you want to retire, I would love to have a farm and go off and do the work, and you be home with the children. I know you can take care of things. I’ll just hand you the money and you’ll take care of everything.’ He was younger, and he was different than Kareem.”
“Richard [Pryor] was in awe, but I kept feeling that maybe he got attention, because, ‘I’m with Foxy Brown! She’s sexy, so I must be sexy.’ You know? They were [all] different personalities, and I wasn’t going to change. Every time I wanted to go home to Colorado or Wyoming and go fishing, he said, ‘Are you seeing another man back home?’ I would say, ‘Well, there’s one man I see. He’s been my guardian, and that’s my grandfather.’ Richard said, ‘I want to meet this grandfather.’ He met my granddad and they [got close]. They adopted each other… going fishing [together].”
On discussing a Foxy Brown remake with the late Stan Lee:
Stan Lee wrote about me in his autobiography. He told me that in his comic books, he patterned a lot of his Black characters after me. He showed up at a Comic Con in New York, and both of us together, we shut it down! He said, ‘I have to touch you, you’re royalty.’ And whenever I came into town, he’d pick me up and we’d go to comic book stores together. He would tell me he wanted to do a Foxy Brown [remake]. I said, ‘Yeah! I think they’re ready for it. I was laughing and I said, ‘You know it’s the brown nipple revolution. I don’t want to put a pasty on them. I mean, I want to show’em.’”
On surviving two rapes and multiple sexual assaults:
“I have been attacked four time, raped twice. Where was God? I jumped out of a car to save my life, and my [then] boss, I stopped him from going and getting my gun and shooting someone because of what had happened [to me]. I saved his life, my life, and the guy who was the perpetrator.”
“There are times where you would think I could be strong because of it, but it did take something out of me. I’m sensitive. I lost trust and faith, because of belief and how it happened, and why. I don’t know what type of therapy or peyote or mushrooms that I would need to take, and I don’t wish to. They happened, I survived, but trust me, chunks of me have left me. I had to give up to survive. I couldn’t retain a piece of [myself]. And so fast forward, I do now have a very strong and deeply rooted sense of peace. But I will still ask, ‘Why did it happen?’ because I’m curious. There are nicks [in me], like in a belt, or like the rings of a tree where it’s interrupted by a lightning bolt or lack of water, or something. That part of me has evolved, but not unscathed.”
On her sex drive and finally finding her “person”:
“I am horny as f*ck,” the screen legend says bluntly and unapologetically. A smile creeps across Pam’s face.
“I have a person. He came back from another part of the world to find me. I met my person three years ago. Through a crowd of people, the crowd opened up and there he was. I never thought I would, you know? You hear about when people find their person, that it’s a warm, fuzzy feeling. I can’t believe it happened now, when I’ve got things to do. Don’t mess up my plans (laughs).’ I said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is what people talk about, and I know exactly what they’re talking about now. One side of my body was [feeling] that. The other side said, ‘Aww, Suki Suki Now!’ you know (laughs)? I said, ‘If I can just get an hour with this person, a day... it would be cool. I’m lucky to have it, because some of my friends never, ever had it. But they married, they had children, because society said so.”
On people risking their lives in other countries to watch her movies:
“My Box Set with: Coffy, Foxy Brown Sheba, Baby, Black Mama White Mama, The Big Dollhouse, have been selling for over fifty years in several languages. To see them in the Czech Republic, in Korean, in Japanese, in all these languages. To see Sheba, Baby playing in Pakistan…”
“In the Muslim countries you can’t show women’s cleavage, or her holding a gun or aiming a gun at a man. That’s taboo. They would show my movies in a different place every night, because the police and the religious police could find out. They needed to move a screening of mine to a different place every night, so that the filmmakers and the audience members wouldn’t be harmed and stoned and killed, or sent to jail. It’s true that people risked their lives to see my films.”
On being propositioned by a wealthy man from Dubai at the height of her fame:
“The Dubai men come over here and they want all the models, and they take care of them. There was one of them that was offering me a car dealership to marry him. I guess he thought I was going to be a taker. He followed me, and he showed up [where I was] in Detroit. He was really fine. I guess he was used to coming on to a lot of women. He could have had several of them; models and actresses. Some of them disappear and they live [in Dubai], or they live over here with immense wealth. True Dat! He was very complimentary and sweet, but I was like, ‘Wow, he’s a good actor! He’s got the moves.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you a Ferrari dealership.’ (laughs) I said, ‘How do you know I like Ferraris?’ They’re used to giving that and baiting [women].”
On Malcolm Jamal Warner’s passing:
“First of all, I just started crying. I’ve met him socially, at industry [events] a couple times. And to see him growing up, [becoming] a dad, married, knowing he became a musician, a teacher, with so much to give. I wanted him to be around longer to share more. He had plenty to share, and the fact that he’s got this little daughter… and she’s gonna be TEN Foxy Browns! She’s going to be way up there!”
“It’s the loss of greatness. It was the loss of him and his smile and curiosity, his passion and poetry; everything he was about. And then I wanted to see everything he did, all his episodes, his music, everything.”
“I want to know, was it human error, or was it his time? His mom, her name is also Pam, said that he was born, I think, in water, and then he left in water. It was very prophetic. And I know what riptides are like, because I’m a swimmer and a diver, and I surf. You can’t win. I know what it feels like and it’s scary. I know that you don’t go in there, not even up to your knees, and definitely not to your waist. You’re going to get pummeled. You’re looking for the sky and it’s dark and sandy, and the wind is knocked out of you.”
Note:
Pam Grier’s Soul Flix, available to stream for free on Roku and Plex
