‘Nobody ever knew’: why Paris Hilton built her ‘Barbie’ persona to block out trauma

Mirrored disco balls, chandeliers you could swing from and a large neon Ernest Hemingway quote that reads, “I drink to make other people more interesting.” I’m in Club Paris, the exclusive yet infamous party room at Paris Hilton’s multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion that’s played host to hundreds of revellers over the past 15 years.

I wish I could say I’m on the dance floor, tequila in hand. Instead, it’s 11.30am on a weekday and I’m waiting for the heiress (to the Hilton hotel chain) turned entrepreneur on a plush grey sofa, surrounded by black-and-white sequinned cushions of her face. Yes, Paris Hilton’s home furnishings are as extra as you might expect.

Paris Hilton: “I invented this Barbie-doll persona ... It was like wearing a shield”Credit: Bradley Meinz/Telegraph 2021

The 40-year-old former It Girl quietly shuffles into the room 15 minutes later. In the early 2000s, she was as famous for partying as she was for carrying miniature dogs around in designer handbags and appearing on the hit US reality show The Simple Life. Millions of viewers worldwide tuned in to watch Paris and fellow socialite Nicole Richie leave behind their mobiles, celebrity status and LA lifestyles to live with a family in Arkansas and fail to hold down manual, low-paying jobs – such as farming and working for a fast-food chain.

Yet today there is no grand entrance. She isn’t flanked by publicists or bodyguards. Neither is she top-to-toe in labels, monograms or Swarovski crystals (all of which she made popular back in the day). She’s wearing black sweatpants and a neon-striped Aviator Nation windbreaker jacket when she joins me on the sofa, and her once long, blonde Barbie-doll hair has been chopped into a chic bob.

But the biggest surprise is that Club Paris is no more. Her home, bought in 2008 and located in a gated community off iconic Mulholland Drive (it was famously burgled by the Hollywood “Bling Ring”, about whom Sofia Coppola made a film in 2013), recently underwent a two-year renovation. And what I’m seeing today are merely the remnants of the decadence and debauchery that once went on here.

Paris with three of her six dogs.Credit: Getty Images

“I’m grown-up now, so this room is a movie theatre,” she says, reaching for a cashmere blanket to wrap herself in. “I’m so over going to parties. I never thought I would say that. I used to live for the nightlife. Now I couldn’t care less. I love being at home watching Netflix and cooking with my love [her fiancé, Carter Milliken Reum – more on him later] and our puppies [there are six, named Diamond Baby, Harajuku, Crypto, Ether, Slivington and Cutesie, and their breeds range from Pomeranian to Chihuahua].

“It’s nice to be with someone where you don’t even want to go out because it’s more fun being at home together. I have lived 10 million lifetimes. I’m ready for the real simple life.”

Paris is so domesticated these days that she has a TV show to prove it. Cooking with Paris, which launched on Netflix this month, follows her as she tries out new recipes in her kitchen – opulent (marble counters, gold taps) with a sprinkling of Paris (a pink food processor, coffee mugs branded with her catchphrase “Loves It’) – joined in each episode by a different celebrity friend.

Before taking part in the show, the only thing she could cook was the lasagne recipe her mother, Kathy Hilton, taught her as a child. “She’s part Italian, so she makes the best lasagne,” Paris explains. “Growing up, I was always in the kitchen with her cutting things up like a little sous chef.” I don’t think she’ll mind me saying she was approached by Netflix after she made the lasagne for her YouTube channel and got 5.1 million views, rather than as a result of her culinary talents.

The show is very Paris: boldly tongue-in-cheek with a “fun and playful” vibe. Think Paris dressed in a hot-pink ball gown riffling through the fruit and veg section of a supermarket. “What do chives look like?” she asks the grocer. “What do I do with them?’

I’m particularly fascinated by Paris’s new-found domesticity because when I first met her, just two years ago, she was still very much a party girl, albeit a business-savvy one who was travelling 250 days of the year to DJ all over the world (Paris has made a name for herself in the industry and started a coveted annual residency at Ibiza super club Amnesia in 2013).

“I invented getting paid to party,” she told me proudly, back then, along with how she felt “forever 21″. But that was before her extraordinary feature-length YouTube documentary, This is Paris, was released in September 2020.

Whether you have long dismissed her as a poor little rich party girl, or recognise her as a business mogul with a multibillion-dollar empire (consisting of 45 branded stores, 19 product lines and 27 fragrances), the documentary, which has had more than 23 million views to date, will make you question everything you thought you knew about Paris Hilton.

Paris in 2001.Credit: Getty Images

When Paris was 17, her parents Kathy and Richard Hilton (the grandson of Hilton hotel founder Conrad Hilton) sent her to a psychiatric residential treatment centre in Utah. They believed an 11-month stay at Provo Canyon School for “troubled teens” would curb her partying, as she was regularly sneaking out of the family’s home to go to nightclubs. What unfolds in the documentary is that Paris, along with many other students at the school, was emotionally and physically abused and left with insomnia, anxiety and trust issues.

Her parents only found out about the abuse when they watched the documentary with their daughter last year. “I made a promise to myself when I left there that I would never think about it or talk about it with my friends or family so nobody ever knew,” Paris explains. It must have come as a terrible shock to them. “They were heartbroken and crying. My mom was shaking. She was like, ‘I am so sorry. I had no idea. I thought it was a normal boarding school.’ But they couldn’t have known; these schools manipulate the parents as much as the kids.”

Paris has since worked with Breaking Code Silence (an organisation created to eradicate the mistreatment of children in systemically abusive institutions) to successfully pass a bill putting certain regulations in place (for example, a ban on chemical sedation and unauthorised mechanical restraints) in Utah’s “troubled teen” centres. She hopes to go to Washington, DC to get the same bill passed in every state.

At the time, Paris felt resentful and angry towards her parents “because I was a teenager”, she points out. “Who wouldn’t be?” Now, as an adult looking back on it, she says, “I understand so much more. If I have a daughter one day and she’s 16 and sneaking out to nightclubs, I’ll freak out.”

Paris with her Simple Life co-star Nicole Richie in 2004.Credit: Getty Images

The film, she says, has brought her closer to her parents, “because they understand me more”. The same could be said for the rest of the world. After all, the real takeaway from This Is Paris is that the Paris Hilton playing out her life in the public eye – complete with high-pitched baby voice and catchphrases like “That’s hot” – is merely a character she created.

“When I got out of the school, at 18, I didn’t want to think about [the abuse] so I invented this whole new persona: a Barbie doll with a perfect life,” she explains. She adopted the voice for The Simple Life and found herself having to do it again and again when the show kept being recommissioned.

“When the media would talk negatively about me, I would just be like, ‘That’s not even who I am. I’m the smart one because I made up this character and I’m laughing all the way to the bank.’”

Even when the coverage was particularly nasty? After all, she’s had tabloids following her since her late teens; their interest peaking when a sex tape she appeared in was leaked and released as 1 Night in Paris by her ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2004.

In This Is Paris, Paris reveals she was pressured into making the film, aged 19, and likens it to being “electronically raped”. She recalls, “I was so vilified all the time, people were so mean about me, making up stories every second. In the beginning, I would cry and call my mom, but I got used to it over the years.”

There are striking parallels between Paris’s experience in Utah – the fear that she wouldn’t be believed and subsequent pretence that life was “perfect” in order to cope – and what Britney Spears’s recent testimony revealed about the conservatorship that has controlled her life for the past 13 years. Paris says it was heartbreaking to hear her friend take the stand. “I knew she was being controlled but I had no idea it was on that level,” she admits. “She has never spoken up like that before, so it made me proud to hear her using her voice.”

“I’m definitely an undercover nerd. I’ve always been like that. I’m really into video games, crypto, tech and gadgets. A lot of people don’t believe it but I’m very shy.”

Paris, who is the oldest of four siblings (her sister Nicky was born in 1983; her brothers, Barron and Conrad, in 1989 and 1994 respectively), was born in New York. Hers was a wealthy and privileged upbringing (her father is said to be worth $US350 million), split between homes in Los Angeles and New York and her grandfather Barron Hilton’s Nevada ranch. Paris is reluctant to talk about growing up as a Hilton, although she does recall being a tomboy. “I loved being outside, fishing and playing sport,” she recalls.

Nicky, who had her very first taste of fame when she and Paris (then aged 16 and 19 respectively) had their pictures taken by cult photographer David LaChapelle for a story called “Hip-Hop Debs!” in the September 2000 issue of Vanity Fair – recalls with glee in This Is Paris what a tomboy Paris was, and still is. Paris laughs when I bring it up: “I’m definitely an undercover nerd. I’ve always been like that. I’m really into video games, crypto, tech and gadgets. A lot of people don’t believe it but I’m very shy.”

That may be so but she’s also an “open book” after the documentary, and she’s just signed a lucrative two-year deal with Warner Bros to develop, produce and star in a series of original unscripted TV shows. The first instalment is Paris in Love, in which she’ll document the run-up to her forthcoming wedding to 40-year-old Carter, a tech entrepreneur and investor.

Details are top secret but she mentions “wedding gowns”, so we can safely assume there’ll be a few costume changes on the big day. Her dream dress “used to be very princessy”, she admits, “now, I’m thinking more elegant, but still like, Paris-ised”. And anyone hoping for diva moments will be disappointed: “I’m the opposite of a Bridezilla,” she promises.

Paris had to convince camera-shy Carter to participate. “I explained, ‘This is not a reality show; it’s an elevated docu-series,’ ” she says proudly. “He loves me so much he agreed!”

In New York, during 2004.

It must be refreshing to be with someone who doesn’t court publicity. When we last spoke, Paris said she found it hard to trust her romantic partners – and who can blame her? “Carter is the opposite of every guy I’ve ever met before,” she says with a smile. “He’s very business-focused and not into the Hollywood scene. I’ve never experienced that before, so it’s amazing to know someone loves me
for me and doesn’t want the spotlight.”

Paris with her fiancé, author Carter Milliken Reum.Credit: AP

It probably helps that Carter’s family is also wealthy – his father, Robert Reum, was chairman of Amsted Industries, ranked one of America’s largest private companies by Forbes. The couple, who have known each other for 15 years, got together in 2019 and haven’t spent a night apart since. Proud to be thought of as an influencer before there was even a name for it, Paris’s constantly evolving personal brand has recently pivoted into the arena of podcasts (interviewing friends and family for iHeartRadio’s This Is Paris) and the digital-art world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). She also has plans for a second memoir, set to be a very different read to her fluffy first effort, 2004’s Confessions of an Heiress.

“Success has driven me my whole life, especially after what I went through as a teenager,” she says. “I never wanted to be known as a Hilton-hotel granddaughter, I wanted to be known as Paris.”

But, despite once claiming she wouldn’t stop working until she’d made a billion dollars, it seems her
and Carter’s plans to start a family are what she’s really focused on next. The couple are currently undergoing fertility treatment, and while her reasons for embarking on IVF are not public, her recent comments that she was motivated by a desire to “pick” twins weren’t well received by the IVF community.

“I never wanted to be known as a Hilton-hotel granddaughter, I wanted to be known as Paris.”Credit: Photography by Bradley Meinz/Telegraph 2021

Paris may not act like a 21-year-old any more, but she still looks like one. Her anti-ageing secret? Tech, naturally. She’s just ordered her own hyperbaric oxygen chamber and uses a microcurrent device called NeurotriS, which Madonna also swears by. “I’ve never done an injection: no Botox, no fillers,” she says.

Her style, on the other hand, has definitely matured for the better. Case in point, the chic spring/summer 2021 Lanvin campaign Paris was recently the face of. “I used to have more of a Barbie-raver, club-kid vibe. Now I’m more elegant and wearing Lanvin, Valentino and Oscar de la Renta.”

It must be strange seeing all the things she popularised in the 2000s – Juicy Couture tracksuits and Von Dutch hats – on Gen Z. “Everything I wore back in the day when people thought I was nuts,” she says, laughing. “It was like, ‘What is she wearing?’ Now everyone is wearing it.”

Before I leave, I ask Paris if her dogs still reside in their two-storey Spanish-style villa because, frankly, along with Club Paris, it’s the stuff of legend. She takes me downstairs to the pool area, where the doggy mansion stands before us, in all its glory, and miniature dogs clamour around us. I ask if I can take a picture and, before I know it, Paris – dogs in hand – is posing up a storm.

A lot might have changed, I think, but there’s plenty that hasn’t. And somehow, something tells me we’ll always have Paris.

Cooking with Paris premiered globally on Netflix this month.

Stella Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale August 22. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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