Erin Andrews, Charissa Thompson react to Pamela Anderson story

Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson were reminded of their past with invasion of privacy while watching Pamela Anderson’s new Netflix documentary, “Pamela, a love story.”
During a recent episode of their “Calm Down” podcast, the Fox Sports personalities discussed the documentary — which addresses the controversy over Anderson’s leaked sex tape with ex-husband Tommy Lee — and recalled their own experiences with video voyeurism and cell phone hacking.
“It was so freaking good… It touched me in a certain way because of video voyeurism,” said Andrews, who went through her own nightmare ordeal when a stalker secretly recorded her in her hotel room in 2008.
“… I had never heard her speak about the violation and the invasion of privacy that it was. And one line that resonated with me, because I know you and I both deal with PTSD from this, was that she said ‘this had never been dealt with before. No one had ever seen it.’
“It took such a toll on her, as her kids say, it ruined her career, ruined her relationship when this new movie came out [Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” miniseries] she talked about how it brought it back up. So many times, she was like [in the Netflix documentary], ‘I don’t feel good’… which is how I feel a lot of times. I just never heard her to articulate it that way before, and my heart went out to her and I know yours did as well.”
Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson on their “Calm Down” podcast in Feb. 2023. Twitter/Calm Down podcast
Thompson then weighed in on the documentary, and recalled an incident in 2018, when private photos and videos were hacked from her iCloud account and shared online.
“It’s an unfortunate thing that you and I both have empathy for one another on because we went through it in different ways,” Thompson said. “But when everything happened to me, those were private videos and pictures that were taken with my boyfriend, that were never meant to have someone hack into my phone and take.
“[When strangers have said to me in the past], ‘Why would you ever even take those?’ OK, so, what I always say is, ‘Give me your phone, and if you don’t want me to see anything that’s in that phone, then you’re just going to open it up, any email, any text message, anything — this isn’t just about pictures. This is your private property that you don’t think is ever going to be exposed. This was a private video in her own home and was stolen.
“… I just think her never making a dollar off of it and the thousands and thousands of dollars I have spent to try and take these things down — and then the cease and desists don’t work and at some point you feel like you’re up against this thing that you just can’t win at anyways without going down a deep rabbit hole of those kinds of conversations because that’s for a another podcast on another day. But I had a lot of compassion for her.”
Fox Sports sideline reporter Erin Andrews looks on during Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and Eagles on Feb. 12, 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Charissa Thompson at the Super Bowl LVII pre-show at State Farm Stadium on Feb. 12, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona. Variety via Getty Images
In March 2016, Andrews was awarded $55 million in her civil lawsuit over the secret recording and release of a video showing her naked during a hotel stay at a Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University.
Andrews filed the suit after the video was released in 2009, and was recorded by Michael David Barrett the year prior, when the stalker used a hacksaw to tamper with her hotel room’s peephole.
Barrett was convicted in criminal court of stalking Andrews and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
As for Thompson? The Amazon “Thursday Night Football” host took legal action when an iCloud hack resulted in her private photos were leaked and published online in 2018.
Pamela Anderson attends Netflix’s ‘Pamela, a love story’ Los Angeles Premiere at Netflix Tudum Theater on Jan. 30, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images for Netflix
At the time, Thompson’s lawyer, Andrew Brettler, told Fox News that his client was taking “every appropriate step” after the “disgusting invasion of [her] privacy rights” to seek justice.
The content was eventually removed and the Los Angeles District Attorney has gotten involved and launched an investigation into the matter.
Andrews and Thompson, who are close friends and colleagues, are looking forward to time off in the NFL offseason after representing Fox Sports at Super Bowl 2023.