Debbie Harry as Pamela Anderson’s Mom? No Notes
The iconic blondes will play a mother-daughter duo in Jonathan Krisel’s Maitreya
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Some casting decisions are so cosmically correct they feel less like a director's choice and more like the universe correcting an oversight. Pamela Anderson and Debbie Harry — two icons who've spent decades being underestimated by the exact industries that made them famous — are officially sharing the screen, and the project sounds as strange and specific as both of them deserve.
The film is called Maitreya, according to Harper's Bazaar, a comedy directed by Jonathan Krisel (Portlandia) and written by Samuel D. Hunter, the playwright behind The Whale. Anderson plays the title character: a new-age healer who, upon learning her father is dying, decides the solution is to drag her entire family — including her mother, Barbara, played by Harry — on a trip to India anyway. The film is set to debut at the Cannes market, backed by Caviar, the indie production house behind The Sound of Metal and the Palme d'Or–winning War Pony. Managing director Michael Sagol called the project "a soulful exploration of a dysfunctional family" that's "perfectly suited" to Krisel's absurdist voice.
Two Comebacks, One Very Good Movie
Anderson's career resurgence has been one of pop culture's more satisfying narratives. After her Broadway debut in the 2022 revival of Chicago, she followed with a Netflix documentary, a memoir, and a Golden Globe–nominated turn in The Last Showgirl. She was also, by most accounts, the funniest person in last year's Naked Gun revival alongside Liam Neeson. What looked like nostalgia has clarified into something sharper: a genuine second act, built on actual craft.
Harry's return is longer overdue. When she stepped back from music in the '80s, she leaned into film — Videodrome, Hairspray, a run of roles through the mid-2000s — before her last major credits, Anamorph and Elegy, both in 2007–08. Maitreya is her real cinematic return, and pairing her opposite Anderson — who shares her exact July 1 birthday, because of course they do — feels less like coincidence and more like a thesis statement.
Two women the industry spent years trying to flatten into a single dimension, now playing mother and daughter in a movie about healing, dysfunction, and leaving when everyone expects you to stay — the subtext practically writes itself.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
