What was Pamela Anderson's role in helping Julian Assange? Friendship explored in the wake of the WikiLeaks founder being freed

On June 24, Australian editor, publisher, and activist Julian Assange was released from the Belmarsh prison in London, UK, after spending 1901 days inside. The freedom of the WikiLeaks founder comes in the wake of his guilty plea to violating U.S. espionage law and signing a deal with the U.S. Justice Department.

Canadian-American model, actress, and media personality Pamela Anderson has been a longtime friend of Julian Assange and helped raise awareness about his “wrongful indictment,” which she detailed in her 2023 memoir, Love, Pamela.

The Baywatch star also helped combat any and all smear campaigns against Assange over the years.

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All you need to know about Pamela Anderson and Julian Assange’s friendship

During Julian Assange’s incarceration period, many A-listers advocated for his freedom, including his lifelong friend Pamela Anderson. As per several reports, the duo met in 2014 through their mutual friend, fashion designer Viviene Westwood. Since then, they have maintained a close bond based on mutual love and respect.

In her 2023 memoir, Love, Pamela, the 56-year-old former Playboy cover girl shared several anecdotes about their relationship. For instance, she confessed to meeting Assange frequently at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he spent seven years hiding before his incarceration.

Later, when he was sent to the supermax prison in Belmarsh, Anderson continued to visit him there and was the first person whose visit was requested by Julian.

“It was a shocking experience — the five checkpoints, the shouting and screaming while we crossed through the yard to go through a separate entrance. It was the most frightening place I’ve ever visited. …[Assange] doesn’t belong there,” she wrote in her book.

She further went on to write how she undertook “public-facing missions” to help her friend and bring “attention” to his “wrongful incarceration.” Anderson detailed how she booked a commercial in Australia for the sole purpose of meeting Assange’s mother, Christine, whom she provided with “cash resources” to help “send two MPs from Parliament to visit Julian in jail.”

Besides, the V.I.P. actress claimed that during her stay in Australia, she wrote a letter to the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, hoping to meet with him and asking for the help of his government.

“He responded cheekily in the press by saying he’d love to meet me if he could bring a few of his buddies along. That didn’t go over well — women were unimpressed with his insensitive remarks, which, by then, had reached the international press,” Pamela added.

Despite her continued struggle to help Julian, Anderson continued to advocate for him and use her image and reputation to create positive awareness about his case, and “use all I had even more to get attention for what was right.”

Apart from her memoir, Pamela Anderson has talked about her connection with Julian Assange during interviews over the years. For instance, she once told Interview Magazine:

"I felt like my connection to Julian was the human one. We had a close connection and he even said that I was the only person he's ever trusted."

Likewise, in a 2018 conversation with Nine’s 60 Minutes, she explained that, contrary to media speculation, she didn’t have a romantic relationship with Julian but was very “close” to him. However, in her memoir, she claimed that they spent a “drunken night” together once and joked about getting married.

The Hollywood star once even referred to Assange as “the world’s most innocent man” on X and demanded his release and pardon in the aftermath of his prison sentence. Standing outside the prison in 2019, she also told reporters:

"It is going to be a long fight. He deserves our support, he needs our support. He deserved our support because he has sacrificed so much to bring the truth out and we deserve the truth. That is all I can say. I am sorry, I feel sick, I feel nauseous. We are here to save his life, that is what this is."

In 2023, Ryan White, the director of Pamela Anderson’s Netflix documentary Pamela, a love story, told The Hollywood Reporter that Pamela was so “drawn” to Julian Assange “because she sees him as the most extreme example of transparency and the truth.”

He further added how the Home Improvement star saw Assange and WikiLeaks as “the extreme version of speaking truth to power” and felt it was important for her lifelong aim of preaching honesty.

Notably, Anderson labeled her friendship with Assange as “invigorating, s*xy, and funny” in her memoir and claimed that her friend’s sense of humor was “alarmingly smart.” She also called their conversations “colorful” and Julian a problem-solver.

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As for Julian Assange, he has never spoken publicly about his relationship with Pamela Anderson. The Australian journalist rose to global fame in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including classified information on U.S. diplomatic cables, an airstrike in Baghdad, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2019, he was arrested and sentenced to Belmarsh Prison, London, and has ever since fought for his extradition. On June 24, 2024, Julian Assange signed a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department and was granted bail by the U.K. High Court after pleading guilty to a single count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. The same afternoon, he boarded a flight to his home in Queensland, Australia.

On June 26, Julian Assange is slated to be sentenced to 62 months of prison time already served at a hearing that will take place on the Northern Mariana Islands’s Saipan in the Western Pacific region.