‘The Naked Gun’ star Pamela Anderson was ‘terrified’ of performing ‘crazy’ jazz scat

If acting doesn’t work out for Pamela Anderson, she might want to consider a career in jazz.

In the new Naked Gun movie, in theaters Aug. 1, Anderson’s Beth Davenport takes the stage to perform a scat number, all as a distraction so that Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. can infiltrate the back room of a supper club owned by tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston) to find proof that Cane killed one of his programmers, Beth’s brother, Simon.

Just as she did playing Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway in 2022, Anderson gets to showcase her singing skills — albeit this time with an absurd number titled Sassafras Chicken in D.

Elizabeth Gillies, who’s currently starring in the Off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors, has collaborated on several of Naked Gun producer Seth MacFarlane’s swing and jazz albums. In addition to working with Anderson on the vocals, Gillies also co-wrote the song, and frequent MacFarlane collaborator John McNeely composed the two-and-a-half-minute ditty. An extended version includes lyrics to “Bawitdaba,” one of Anderson’s ex-husband Kid Rock’s songs; a video game company, sadly, didn’t approve the use of the iconic theme song from one of its games.

“I was like, How am I going to remember this? It’s an absolutely nutty scat solo,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “But I did, and I sing it all the time, just walking around the house. I can’t get it out of my head.”

The sequence took 12 hours to film, and Anderson performed it live each take, singing along to her own pre-recorded track. “What you see in the final movie, it’s all Pam, but it’s a blend of pre-recorded and live,” director Akiva Schaffer confirms. “She performed it like a musical number.”

Anderson describes the scene as one of pure freedom. 

“You have to have courage. You have to have courage to be an actor at all. But that’s my happy place is when I’m terrified,” she admits. “I actually really enjoy singing. I love being on stage… The feeling is so rewarding because I feel like we repress so much of ourselves, and especially as an artist, and I love to write and journal and write poetry, but performing and working on a movie is another way to express yourself because everything is loaded. All the words to that song, I’m thinking of personal experiences in my life, and so I’m able to get it out even in a crazy scene like that. So it’s not just spitting out the words, it’s performing some of your innermost thoughts.”

As witness to the performance, Huston “was utterly spellbound” by Anderson.

“When she hit the stage with this jazz number, which was quite complicated and kind of mathematical, I was, yeah, smitten,” he admits. “I had the joy of a couple of my most entertaining days of work that I’ve ever had. I was sitting at this table in this restaurant club and had the joy to see her perform time and time and time again….I was all a tizzy.”

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