The Last Showgirl: The Constant Battle To Be A Good Enough Woman – In The Words Of Pamela Anderson’s Shelley

You didn’t think I was done writing and discussing TIFF, did you? Such a mesmerizing experience deserves more than just a single blog post on the web. Not even the experience itself that deserves a single blog post on the web, but the movie is what deserves it. That movie is ‘The Last Showgirl’, which stars Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brenda Song, Billie Lourd, and the only man that was man enough to be in a room filled with strong, bada** women, Dave Bautista.

My husband and I went to TIFF to celebrate our anniversary, and we ended up having the time of our lives. It was an experience of a lifetime. We didn’t know what movie we wanted to see. We just wanted to experience the magic that is TIFF, and our experience ended up being beyond what we expected. Walking across the theatre was magic, sitting in the theatre where legends like Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis walked on was profound, listening to them, as well as their co-stars speak was astounding, and the movie itself was something that could be talked about for days on end over a glass of wine, which I can’t actually have because it could trigger a seizure. So I had a coffee instead.

‘The Last Showgirl’ isn’t the type of movie you want to put on to relax to after a long day. Instead, it’s a movie that’ll make you think and reflect. It’s only 80 minutes in length, but feels much longer than that. It’s not because it’s a terrible movie; it’s actually a great movie. It feels longer because there’s A LOT that happens in those 80 minutes. The movie shows women of different backgrounds and of different age groups. It shows their respective lives and the metamorphosis they each go through as their longtime show is coming to an end. More specifically, the movie follows Shelley’s story. Shelley, played by Pamela Anderson, has been with the show the longest of the girls; about 30 years or so. She was very young when she started, and she had to give up and sacrifice a lot of herself to be a part of the show.

Shelley has a daughter, Hannah, played by Billie Lourd. Shelley and Hannah are estranged. Shelley is doing everything she can to reconnect with Hannah, but Hannah shows her hesitations to even meet with her. When she does agree to meet with Shelley, we learn that she calls her by her name; not ‘Mom’. As the movie progresses, we learn more and more about why Shelley’s life ended up the way it did – she was a working mom and had no help taking care of her daughter. When Hannah finally saw the show for the first time, she felt that her mother chose the show over her.

As the show that she’d been a part of since she was a young 20-something year old is about to close, Shelley starts going to auditions again. She hadn’t done that in over 30 years. Things are much different now than they were 30 years ago. When she goes to audition for her next role, she dresses the same as she would when she was 20. She also prepares a dance number that a 20-something year old would prepare. Also preparing to audition for the same role is Marianne, played by Brenda Song, Shelley’s fellow showgirl, who’s also obviously much younger than Shelley.

Shelley doesn’t get the part. She tells the male producer she could do better; be better. She pleads with him, but nothing works. He’s already made up his mind. And he doesn’t shy away from telling her how it is; from telling her that she’s too old to audition for the role that she’s auditioning for, and that she should consider auditioning for other roles; that what she prepared might’ve worked back when she auditioned last time 30+ years ago, but it doesn’t anymore.

For obvious reasons, Shelley doesn’t take the ‘constructive criticism’ very well and storms off. But before she does, she makes sure she tells the producer exactly what’s on her mind. She gave him an entire speech that he didn’t ask for in the first place. It was an important speech; one that reminded everyone – all those who were in the audience at TIFF’s premiere certainly – of women and expectations. More specifically, of how hard society really is on women by expecting them to be good at just about ANYTHING. I guess you had to be there to really feel the depth of the speech. It was an important speech. One that held true to women everywhere.

Of her role as Shelley, Anderson said during the Q&A, ‘I think I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this role. It’s the first time I ever read a good script, first of all. I never had a script given to me that was coherent. So I was like, I’m really wanting to do this. I’ve never felt that strongly about something. I have nothing to lose. I’m just going to do it.’ For those of you that don’t know or need a refresher, this isn’t Anderson’s only role aside from ‘Baywatch’. She also appeared in such movies as ‘Barb Wire’ and ‘Raw Justice’.

Jamie Lee Curtis is someone who’s very proud to be a part of ‘The Last Showgirl.’ If you read my previous post, you’ll know that it was a big surprise to me, considering her status in Hollywood. This is a little movie that was filmed in only 18 days. She could’ve done any big Hollywood blockbuster, and yet she chose this. She certainly knows how to choose her work wisely. I guess that comes with status. She made the right career move with Everything Everywhere All At Once’, a little movie that won Curtis her first Oscar despite her being in the industry since the 70’s.

In ‘The Last Showgirl’, Curtis plays Annette, a happy-go-lucky ex-showgirl who’s now working as a waitress and later reveals to Shelley that she lives in her car. During the Q&A that was conducted following the movie’s first ever showing, Curtis broke down in tears while speaking of the movie. She was so proud to be a part of this little, and yet profound movie. Of her role, Curtis said, ‘It’s a hard life wherever you go. And in Vegas it’s a really hard life. It is a movie about going after your dreams. But of course, the dreams become a really harsh reality. And for women, it’s a really harsh reality that men don’t have as much. Annette is simply your portal into what ends up happening. And a spray tan helps.’

And speaking of Jamie Lee Curtis, she recently appeared on Kevin Hart’s podcast, ‘Gold Minds With Kevin Hart.’ The duo starred together in 2024’s ‘Borderlands’, also co-starring Cate Blanchett. Throughout their in-depth conversation, Curtis opened up about her take on creativity. She said, ‘If you’re a creative person, the tragedy is the creativity that dies with you if you don’t let it out, and so for me, I wake up turned on by creativity every day,” Jamie told Kevin. “I wake up like this every day. There’s not a day in my life where I wake up going, like, ‘Ugh’. And now, all of a sudden, I’m owning it. And now, all of a sudden, I’m a boss. All of a sudden, I’m a bitch boss, and I like it. And I’m now taking all of this great opportunity that has come my way … And from that, I am now getting to produce things, and then one of these things will end up on a screen, and you will get to see my name and it will say, ‘Jamie Lee Curtis. Produced by Jamie Lee Curtis’. That is because I’m a creative person. I am constantly creating, and I will create until I die. I will not end up being one of those people that just drifts away. I’m gonna create until I die because that is what turns me on every day.’

Curtis also put an emphasis on how important it is to get out of your comfort zone; to get your art out there in the world; that if you just sit on the couch, your art won’t get noticed by anyone. It’s a really nice thought and all. Everything she said has validity to it. If I didn’t become a mother and spent the past year and a half at home with my kid, I would’ve agreed with her 100%. But I did become a mother and spent this last year and a half practically in isolation; more so than I did when we were all in isolation during the pandemic in 2020. Hence, you can be sure that I got things to say.

As a woman, I was personally almost hurt when I listened to Jamie Lee Curtis speak. I’ve been saying the same thing these past two blog posts, and I’ll continue saying this for as long as I ever speak of her on this blog: she’s one of, if not the, most humble, down-to-earth human beings to come out of Hollywood golden era. She’s the OG nepo baby. But she still comes from a place of profound privilege. I know that she’s a mother herself. She’s a mother of two. And I have to give her credit for how accepting she’s been of her transgender daughter, Ruby.

But there’s a real disconnect between her definition of success and hard work and the reality of a ‘regular’ person, or a person like me – a disabled woman who’s just trying to survive. These 22 months since my son came into this world, my entire life had been centred around him. I was with him ALL the time, 24/7. My husband was very much a present father, and still is. When it came to outside help, we’ve only really had my parents. My husband’s family has…let’s just say, crossed many boundaries over the years, but especially since the birth of my son. That’s with the exception of my mother-in-law. She’s been great, but she doesn’t live in the country, so she’s more of a vacation grandma.

I would’ve personally gone insane if I didn’t have my husband’s and my parents’ support. Who knows where I would’ve ended up. But even when I did that help, it was with me around. I’d be lucky if I got an hour break to myself. I became very lonely and isolated. I think any new mother will tell you that the experience of becoming a mom isn’t what’s expected. You think you’re as ready as ever. But once the baby, this brand new human being that you’re responsible for, is out of the womb, you realize that you’re not ready for sh*t. No matter how many books you read, no matter how many parenting classes you took, no matter how many people have lectured you in the past about what it’s like to become a parent, nothing ever prepares you for it other than hands on experience. And I had to learn to be a parent as a woman who’s living with not one, but two disabilities.

Make no mistake, motherhood is hard, and it’s harder when you’re a disabled mother. But certainly not impossible. With that said, as motherhood, and adjusting to my new life as a mother, became my top priority for almost two years, my career took a backseat. I still wrote for the blog. But I didn’t get myself out there to meet new people and do as much networking as I possibly could, or none at all more like, to promote myself and the blog itself. I was busy being a mom and taking care of my baby. Hence, I wasn’t doing as Jamie Lee Curtis said to do for one to be successful.

As you can imagine, it was a moment of feeling like a complete failure for me when I listened to Curtis speak those words. It just proved that Pamela Anderson’s character speech in ‘The Last Showgirl’ where Shelley is declined for an audition held absolutely true. Women can never be good at anything at all. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. If it’s career they’re excelling in, it’s love they’re lacking in. If it’s love they’re excelling in, it’s career they’re lacking in.

Just in the last couple of days, I got the chance to finish watching the latest instalment of ‘Emily In Paris’, which stars Lily Collin’s, daughter of legendary singer Phil Collin’s, in the lead role. For those of you that don’t know, the show follows a young woman in her early 30’s taking a leap of faith by accepting a job in Paris and moving there from the United States without even knowing a single word in French. The show follows Emily’s journey to adapting to her new life as the ‘American Girl’ in Paris, all while also meeting new people everywhere she went, making new friendships, and even falling in love.

Emily’s main love interest throughout the entire series is Gabriel, played by Lucas Bravo. They’re mostly not together, and on a personal level, I don’t think they’re actually good for each other and I hope they’re not endgame. Their relationship is mostly based on their sexual tension, but there doesn’t seem to be much more than that other than friendship and admiration for each other. When they do get together (multiple times), there’s always something in the way and they end up breaking things off before their relationship could really get started. It’s just a toxic, messy, never-ending back-and-forth that’s just gotten boring over the four seasons.

The last time they got together, Emily was fresh out of a relationship with Alfie, played by Lucien Leon Laviscount, a British expat. Gabriel was fresh out of a relationship with Camille, played by Camille Émilie Razat. Camille and Gabrielle were about to get married, but Camille breaks things off with him at the alter because she knows Gabriel is still in love with Emily. As Emily and Alfie were guests at the wedding, Alfie hears everything and breaks up with Emily right there and then as well. Emily and Gabriel were finally on the right track…until they weren’t.

Before the wedding, Camille experiences pregnancy symptoms. After going to the doctor, however, it’s confirmed that she’s not. And yet, she still continues pretending she’s pregnant in order to keep Gabriel around despite the fact that she knows he’s in love with Emily. In a cosmic way, she still hopes he’ll choose her. Emily ends up breaking up with Gabriel because she feels like she’s the third wheel between the three of them. Camille, after some time, tells Gabriel the truth, but he and Emily are still broken up despite the truth coming out.

And during the time that she’s, yet again, separated from Gabriel, Emily meets Marcello, a young Italian man who’s in Paris for business reasons. They connect on a deep level. originally from Rome, he invites Emily to join him there for vacation, no-work allowed type of vacation. When she takes a video of the beautiful views she sees while he shows her his city, he encourages her to put the phone away and look with her eyes instead. It’s a big thing to achieve when you’re around an influencer. Emily ends up the best time with Marcello. We finally see her happy and carefree. It’s the first time we see Emily truly be herself.

This happiness is interrupted, however, when Sylvie, Emily’s boss sabotages Emily’s new romance and uses it to her advantage for a business opportunity. Marcello assumes that Emily only came with him to Rome because she saw him as a gate for work. Though she tries to tell him that she truly wanted to be in Rome to be with him, he doesn’t believe her and storms off. Sylvie realizes what she’d done and apologizes to Emily. In turn, Emily tells Sylvie that she didn’t believe that she was sorry; that she didn’t actually care for anyone but herself.

Emily and Marcello end up working things out, and we’re going to exclude the fact that Gabriel also simultaneously is in the headspace to win Emily back. But again, it comes at the expense of a work opportunity. It’s one that she didn’t want in the first place, but nevertheless, it’s at the expense of a work opportunity that she could’ve gotten. It just goes to show that women constantly have to choose. No matter how much we try, we can’t excel at everything in life. Something’s always gotta give. It’s a constant battle for a woman – love vs. career.

In Shelley’s case in ‘The Last Showgirl’, she had to give up being a mother to her daughter in order to work so she could provide for her daughter. No one else could do that for her. This decision that she made destroyed the emotional connection she had with her daughter, but again, something had to give. They say life is a series of choices, but I have to disagree. For us women, sometimes life is a series of choices that are made for us. For instance, Shelley didn’t choose to live this life that she ended up living for 30 plus years. A lot of the times, a woman’s life is based on circumstances. And if any woman does decide to live a life that SHE wants, then she’s constantly being judged for it. It’s a constant battle that we’re in to be good enough.