If there’s one thing Pamela Anderson raised her children to try to believe in, it’s magic.
“I always find little toys in my garden and my flower beds, and I always think those are fairies planting little things,” Anderson told WWD. “And my kids are always rolling their eyes, going, ‘Mom, you put it there.’”
Said kids — Brandon, 30, and Dylan, 28, — now help Anderson run her vegan, cruelty-free skin care brand Sonsie. It’s a family affair that’s helped shape the brand’s various products and campaigns, including a line of lip balms inspired by Anderson’s childhood memories of her grandparents’ farm in Canada, the same one she resides on today.
With nearly three years of leadership under her belt, Anderson is incorporating an occasion so synonymous with family that it makes perfect sense for Sonsie: a holiday campaign.
Released on Friday, the anchoring animated stop-motion film — which features a garden, woodland animals and a mini puppet version of Anderson — is an extensive labor of love, one Anderson’s son, Dylan Jagger Lee, helped spearhead as the brand’s chief brand officer. Made entirely without the use of AI, the campaign was co-created by Lee and Paris-based artist Alix Bortoli and utilized 11 handmade puppets and nearly 1,700 hand-posed frames.
Over the course of an eight-month process that involved Bortoli flying from Paris to Vancouver Island with the puppets, the pair slowly brought to life a fairy-tale vision that began as a conversation on the couch between Anderson and Lee.
“How can we dive even further into the garden and into this magical world that we play in?” Lee recalled discussing with his mother. “Right away, we thought stop motion. We thought miniature characters. We thought, ‘How do we shrink [Anderson] down and get even more playful and magical with the Sonsie world that we’re building?’”
The garden in reference is the heart of Sonsie, its holiday campaign and everything the brand stands for.
“We see the garden as one giant metaphor for beauty,” explained Lee. “You tend to it, it grows, and it teaches you things along the way.” The holiday film, which heavily features the idea of planting seeds early, arrived alongside Sonsie’s Holiday Shop, with skin care gift sets ranging from the Hydration Duo to the Sonsie Bundle, which includes all five of the brand’s essentials in one giftable group.
“We always say here, if you waited for the rain to stop, nothing would get done,” Anderson stated, saying part of the fun of gardening — and of life — is getting your hands a little dirty. “When it comes to beauty, it’s not always polished. It’s inner radiance, joy and confidence. But it’s also being open to: ‘Not everything is in your control.’”
Anderson gave up using makeup in 2023, a topic that has been widely discussed since, although the “Naked Gun” star never intended that to be the result.
“It wasn’t about making a political statement or any kind of statement, but I thought, ‘What am I doing? Jump off the crazy train and who am I?’” Anderson said, explaining that a significant part of what drives Sonsie came from her decision to “peel it all back.”
The opportunity to join Sonsie, which Anderson onboarded in 2024, found her at “the right time.”
“I found that without makeup, especially on red carpets or magazine covers, it’s good enough,” Anderson said, discussing her incorporation of Sonsie products into her own routine. “My skin is better now than it was when I was in my 30s.”
“With my sons and I, we’re emotionally invested in the family business, and it’s so fun to see them succeed because it’s a group effort,” said Anderson. “But really, it’s them. They’re making it work. There’s a lot of skin care brands out there, but I think what we have is the sincerity and the fairy-tale-esque fun.”
“Fairy-tale-esque” is an apt way to describe the holiday campaign, in which the real Anderson eventually stars, replacing her paper doll version to ride in a sleigh and collect the gifts hand-wrapped by squirrels, rabbits and foxes.
Although reminiscent of children’s books or animated movies, there was no specific source of whimsical inspiration for Sonsie’s campaign, save for the woman behind it. If you ask Lee, the magic is all his mom.
“I get to tell this brand story from a very unique perspective. I get to see this woman who everybody knows, but I get to see her as a woman, as a mother, as somebody who lives her life in the most magical and beautiful way,” said Lee. “I feel like most brand storytellers have to find a story, while I get to live inside this interesting magical one that not many people get to see. The inspiration just comes from the life that we all live together, and I continuously think in that magical, playful, childlike world.”
Sonsie’s most recent campaign marks a turning point for Anderson and Lee, the latter stating he believes the brand is “hitting [their] stride at the moment.”
While Sonsie plans to continue expanding with campaigns and partnerships this year, Anderson isn’t 100 percent sure what’s next for the brand — or for her.
“Whatever we do will be something beautiful, magical and have that storytelling element to it,” said Anderson, who believes they have found the “voice of Sonsie” with the holiday campaign.
“This is about freedom. It’s not about no makeup. It’s about freedom to wear, to be anything, and to change your mind,” said Anderson. “There’s no rules. I’m still full of surprises.”
Watch the campaign below.
