When the filmmaker Gia Coppola set out to create The Last Showgirl, she turned to her first artistic love: photography. Drawing inspiration from Lisa Eisner and David Hickey’s 2006 tome, The Book on Vegas, which captures the vivid, kitschy essence of the desert city, Coppola envisioned her film as a visually rich homage to Las Vegas’s fading showgirl culture. “I was referencing John Cassavetes’s structure of making movies, which is keeping things really intimate and close to the chest, and then looking at photography as my mode of inspiration,” she tells W.
The result is a stunning love letter to a bygone era, shot entirely on film. At its heart is Pamela Anderson’s magnetic performance as Shelly, a 57-year-old dancer grappling with the closure of Le Razzle Dazzle, the revue she dedicated her life to. To authentically capture the glamour and grit of Las Vegas showgirls, Coppola and Anderson immersed themselves in the local community, consulting former dancers from the famed, now-shuttered Jubilee! show. Archival Bob Mackie costumes added an extra layer of authenticity to the film’s glittering aesthetic.
The ensemble cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelly’s gambling-addicted best friend, Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka as the next generation of dancers, Dave Bautista as the revue’s production manager (and Shelly’s ex), and Billie Lourd as Shelly’s estranged daughter. Shot over just 18 days, the film boasts a palpable sense of camaraderie that extends beyond the cast. “A lot of the department heads were either a family member or a close friend since high school,” Coppola says, noting her mother, costume designer Jacqui Getty, was responsible for the film’s vibrant looks.
The passion that was poured into The Last Showgirl has been met with critical acclaim: Anderson landed her first-ever Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her touching performance and Miley Cyrus’s original track “Beautiful That Way” received both a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Awards nod for Best Song.
Throughout the process, Coppola documented intimate behind-the-scenes moments with her personal camera, offering a glimpse into the tight-knit set that brought the heartfelt story to life. “Everyone was in it for the right reasons,” Coppola reflects. “We cared deeply about the story—and working with Pamela.”
“My love for Las Vegas started when I was in college,” Coppola says. “I was taken by what an unusual city it is and how it feels so representative of America. My grandfather [Francis Ford Coppola] told me it’s a great place to go and write because it’s open 24 hours, and you can always get a burger. I noticed you can be as weird as you want to be, and no one will judge you.”
“One time my friend got pickpocketed [in Vegas], and we reported it. It led us down the back channels of the casino, where I saw a bulletin board for Employee of the Month. That always stayed with me, just wondering, what is the day-to-day life in Las Vegas?”
“There’s an interesting throughline of how our culture easily discards anything that gets past a certain age—in humans or even architecture. The Tropicana is being demolished and the Sphere is coming up, but there used to be such a glamorous part of Vegas, and it’s so sad that none of it is really there now. The film’s themes pay tribute to nostalgia and this past art form, the showgirl, which is such an icon, despite not existing anymore.”
“It was really important to try to represent this world authentically. The Vegas community was really supportive. We had showgirls from the original Jubilee! show tell us about their journeys and talk to Pamela about their little tricks like how you walk. There’s this etiquette and professionalism that they take really seriously that’s really admirable.”
“The craft and level of production that goes into those costumes is so interesting. They used to have so much money just for feathers alone. The sets were so big that you can’t even get them out of the casino—they’re still there. We had original Bob Mackie costumes, some of which hadn’t left the building for 30 years. My mom, Jacqui Getty, did the costumes, and she told me, ‘This movie doesn’t work unless you have the real costumes.’ They really were museum pieces.”
“I really didn’t know who else could play Shelly. It’s such a specific role; you can hear her off the page. When I saw Pamela’s documentary, it was divine timing. She’s been underestimated and not really given a chance to showcase her talents. I saw a lot of parallels between Shelly and Pamela, but I also saw enough dissimilarities that the part would still be intriguing for her as an artist.”
“There were two really great moments that Pam improvised. Originally in the script, Shelly says during her audition, ‘I’m 50 and I’m beautiful.’ Instead, Pam said, ‘I’m 57, and I’m beautiful.’ I was taken aback because I didn’t really register her age.”
“And then that beautiful, final speech at the end about motherhood—she totally improvised that. It embodied the whole essence of the movie, and I was like, ‘That’s perfect, I don’t need to do anything.’ She’s just a really real, soulful woman, and she put so much into this movie that it made all of us have to step up to her level of fearlessness and dedication.”
“The girl in the film that plays the Dirty Circus is an artist named Gypsy Wood, and she let us use her actual house for Shelly’s home. When we saw it, it was like, ‘Oh my god, this is kismet.’ She already had The Red Shoes poster in her house, which feels so representative of what Shelly would have.”
“We did very little dressing. My best friend, Natalie Ziering, who I’ve known since high school, was the production designer, and she has amazing taste. We didn’t really want to mess with [the house].”
“Gypsy had those little showgirl dolls, and I loved that she had paint swatches on her walls because she was trying out what color she wanted to paint her cabinets. It’s just so, so great.”
“Jubilee! ended in 2016, and so it felt right to make this movie a bit of a period piece, but also not belabor that and take you out of it. I wanted it to have a timelessness to it.”
“Dave and I met several years ago, and he expressed his desire to be more of a dramatic actor. When I reached out to him about this project, I was struck by how he had so much empathy for and tried to connect with the female characters. There’s this heartbreaking thing of his and Pamela’s characters always missing each other.”
Macaulay Culkin and Jamie Lee Curtis
Photo by Gia Coppola
“That was the first time Jamie and Macaulay Culkin [who is married to Brenda Song], had been reunited since My Girl, which is really exciting.”
“Brenda, Kiernan, and Billie were all really vulnerable about what the story meant to them and how they connected to their characters. I gravitate toward that when casting—to what inspires you and excites you to jump into this project with me.”
“The beautiful part about making a movie is that we’re all vulnerable together. We were a small movie and everyone had to wear many hats. It had a lot of love in it.”
