Paris Hilton & Nicole Richie Discuss 'Traumatizing' Media Coverage, Recall Filming 'The Simple Life'
Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie spoke very candidly about their experience in the public eye during an interview with Glamour.
The celebrities have been close for years and recently reunited for a new reality special called The Encore. Ahead of its premiere this month, they looked back on their original reality series The Simple Life.
They also opened up about their experience being fixtures in the media and dealing with “traumatizing” negative coverage over the years.
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About The Simple Life, Nicole said that they understood that the show “had a formula.”
“They would drop us off at our jobs, they would leave, we would mess it up, they would get mad, we would laugh, we were in skirts. It was entertainment. Both Paris and I are from LA. We understand,” she explained.
Paris added that she was “definitely” playing a character.
“When Nicole and I got approached to do this, they described it as Green Acres meets Clueless, so I knew what the audience wanted – that blond-airhead type of character,” she said. “So I really played into that with questions like, ‘What’s Walmart?’ I always knew what I was doing because I’m not a dumb blonde. I’m just very good at pretending to be one.”
On the topic of media coverage, Paris admitted that “There would be a lot of nights I’d cry and I’d call my mom.”
“But it also made me so strong where after a while I just realized these are people who don’t even know me, they’re just making stories up. It’s very, very traumatizing to have to live through,” she said.
Nicole agreed, saying, “I think it took a heavier toll on me than I could have admitted even to myself at the moment. But looking back, I can see how big of an effect it played on my daily life and my daily choices. But it’s also been such a strong motivation for me to own my own voice and my own narrative. And it makes me really proud of women that we’ve come such a long way to say, ‘That’s actually not okay.’”