Pamela Anderson Was Afraid to Fly After She ‘Almost Got Killed’ By Crazed Passenger Who Mistook Her For Member of The Chicks

Pamela Anderson is flying high at the moment thanks to the most glowing notices of her career in The Last Showgirl. But the actress and former Baywatch star revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week that years ago a man threatened to kill her on a plane when he mistook her for a member of country trio The Chicks.

Responding to a question about whether she’s ever been mistaken for another celebrity, Anderson said, “This one time, I was on a flight and this guy came up to me and said, ‘Do you know what this country’s done for you?’” Anderson said, describing a scene where the man lashed out at her, seemingly in response to the 2003 backlash against the group — then known as the Dixie Chicks — over a comment by singer Natalie Maines denigrating President George W. Bush. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my God. What have I done?’ I was like, ‘Oh god.’ I looked back and he was [angry]. Then this stewardess had to handcuff him to the chair because he was trying to attack me.”

Golden Globe nominee Anderson added, “Ended up he thought I was a Dixie Chick. Remember that whole Dixie Chick thing? I almost got killed on a plane. I was scared to fly after that, a little bit.”

Though she did not specify the timeline of the incident, it appeared she was talking about the period in 2003 after Maines said during a concert in London in March of that year that she was ashamed that Bush was a fellow Texan in response to the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq. The Chicks’ career went into a tailspin following the backlash, impacting their record sales and radio play for years, a situation chronicled in the 2006 doc Shut Up and Sing.

See Anderson on HSC below (Chicks talk comes around 49-minute mark).