Amid news of a Baywatch reboot, David Chokachi, who played lifeguard Cody Madison in 65 episodes of the original, reflected on the day his co-star’s and TV lover’s real-life partner, Tommy Lee, flipped on set. Pamela Anderson also wrote about the incident in her memoir, Love, Pamela detailing how Lee ruined her trailer after learning of her onscreen kiss with Chokachi.
Chokachi was present when Lee “destroyed Pamela‘s $1 million trailer,” however, things cooled down eventually since both men hung out a few times. “I literally walked by her trailer, and I heard, like, demolished things shattering, and I didn’t know what was going on,” Lee told Fox News Digital.
Pamela Anderson’s on-screen kiss made Tommy Lee jealous
Chokachi revealed that Lee was “extremely jealous” and “threatened the producers’ lives,” as he “did not like to see his wife or girlfriend at the time on camera kissing another dude. It turns out he wasn’t that bad guy, and we ended up going to dinner and partying together a couple of times. I mean, I was like, ‘It’s just TV, man.”
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In her 2023 documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, she noted how Lee would “sneak in” during filming to spend “his time with his wife.”
“He came and trashed my trailer on the set. Put his fist through a cabinet. I apologized for not telling him— lying, as he put it, and told him it wouldn’t happen again,” the model recalled. In 1988, the couple separated after welcoming their second child, Dylan Jagger Lee, following Lee’s charge and arrest for felony spousal abuse.
Chokachi recounted how nervous Pamela would be while working and how she would have to lie about her location ahead of intimate scenes. “If there was a make-out scene, she’d have to tell him we’re shooting at a different location or tell the crew to tell Tommy we’re going to be shooting somewhere else, so he doesn’t show up on set and see her making out with me because he’s going to go through the roof,” he told the outlet.
“You could tell she was nervous about it, like just on her mind a lot— the unease that was at home. It’s definitely a bummer,” he added. “I was like, ‘Why would anybody treat this girl like anything but the amazing human being that she is.’ I couldn’t understand it.” After months in jail and probation, Lee and Pamela found common ground as friends and co-parents for their sons.