As reality TV shows go, Paris Hilton's, Paris in Love, is, in my humble opinion, up there with the best. Paris is, after all, the OG of reality TV – lest we forget that she and BFF, Nicole Richie, were the pioneers of the medium back in the early Noughties with the legendary series The Simple Life, when a certain Ms Kim Kardashian was only famous for being Paris’ PA.
And this week, season two of Paris in Love dropped on NOW in the UK and Peacock in the US – and GLAMOUR is all over it! Literally.
This season follows Paris through the early months of new motherhood after she and her husband, tech entrepreneur Carter Reum, welcomed their first child, son Phoenix Barron Hilton-Reum via a surrogate in January this year – the day before she sat down with me in Beverly Hills to be interviewed for our European GLAMOUR February cover. Yes, the day before.
Paris then spent 10 hours the following day on set with GLAMOUR shooting the covers, inside imagery and video content. What’s more, as is chartered in the show, she kept her first child’s arrival a complete secret from the world for the first two weeks of his life, even from both her and Carter's entire families. (The crew of Paris in Love however, not so much, as they were of course on hand to film every single detail of the secret two weeks, even including when Paris and Carter were first introduced to their baby son at the hospital just moments after the surrogate gave birth in a separate delivery suite.)
When the news was eventually broken to the world, via Paris' Instagram account, she and I had a follow-up phone call, so she could tell me all about her happy news. She also shared the very first exclusive pictures of baby Phoenix with GLAMOUR, which was an amazing scoop for us. (She has since welcomed her second child, last month, a baby girl called London, also born via a surrogate.)
The premise for GLAMOUR’s February European cover – published in the UK, Germany and Spain – was to promote Paris’ autobiography, Paris The Memoir, which came out in March this year.
I said it at the time and I will say it again now, it really is one of the best celebrity memoirs I have ever read and tells a surprising story of female empowerment and survival.
Checking into Planet Paris.
The revelations in the book are truly shocking: including that Paris was raped as a teenager, groomed by a teacher at school, had an abortion in her early twenties and – I thought this was my exclusive when I interviewed her – had been going through fertility treatment and planning on having children via a surrogate.
I devoured an early copy of the book on PDF (after signing a lengthy NDA) over Christmas last year, and I was shocked, moved and genuinely affected by all Paris revealed – let alone further details on the abuse she suffered at various schools for troubled teens, which she first revealed in her 2020 YouTube documentary, This is Paris.
As with all great reality TV, Paris in Love season 2 has bucket-loads of drama – and GLAMOUR’s interview and shoot is right at the heart of it.
Episode 2 features the GLAMOUR shoot day itself and includes appearances from GLAMOUR’s European Design Director, Dennis Lye and Deputy Editor and European Beauty Director, Camilla Kay. Paris tells the camera that she has cancelled all work plans since Phoenix's arrival, apart from the GLAMOUR cover shoot and interview (and an appearance at a Hilton golf course in Florida) because it is so important to her.
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On the show, Paris also sits down with her husband, Carter, to discuss the afternoon she and I spent together at the Beverly Hilton hotel. She recounts how it was just the two of us; no publicists, managers, or PAs, only Paris, myself and one of her many dogs, Ether, the miniature Pomeranian. “It was intense”, Paris tells Carter. And it really was.
As I wrote in the cover interview, I was surprised by the fact that, given the sensitivity of the subjects I knew we’d be discussing, it was only Paris and myself present for the interview. Having been in the showbiz game for – gulp – nearly 20 years (I am six weeks older than Paris, in fact), it’s very rare to have such unfettered access to talent of her level. And Paris acknowledges this on the show, saying to Carter, “It was just the two of us, no publicist or anyone else."
It’s also incredibly rare for talent to be so open, honest and trusting as Paris was with me about deeply personal and traumatic incidents that she endured. She was visibly nervous, shaking when we met and as is revealed on Paris in Love and she told me at the time, she had never told her own family, not even her mother or sister about much of the content of the book.
Indeed, it was so intense that at one point, when Paris was recalling sexual abuse and the enforced solitary confinement she suffered at boarding school, she grabbed my hand and tears started streaming down her face and I had to squeeze her hand very tightly and give her a hug.
Congratulations are in order ❤️
Paris goes on to tell Carter that it was “literally the most personal interview, I've ever done in my life..she went deep, covering every aspect of the book” and I can say that it was the most personal that a celebrity has ever been with me and for that I was extremely grateful to Paris for being so trusting. She also told me all about how she created her ‘fake blonde persona’ as a trauma response to the abuse, but how it's this fake persona, that despite her insane family wealth and fame, has amassed her a vast multi-million personal fortune. “I'm not a dumb blonde, I'm just very good at pretending to be one,” she told me.
I have met Paris on numerous occasions throughout my career: in 2009, when she shared the decks with a then little-known DJ called Lady Gaga at Punk nightclub off Oxford Street; at a party with Suki Waterhouse and Courtney Love in Hollywood in 2017, but we first partied together back in May 2006, when we were both just 25 on a yacht party with Harvey Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival. I brought this up with Paris during our interview, as another revelation from her memoir is that she narrowly escaped the convicted rapist, Weinstein, at an event in Cannes, when she claims he chased her into a toilet cubicle, aggressively shouting at her after she refused to meet with him in his hotel room. (Weinstein denied Paris' allegations to GLAMOUR from prison).
In Paris in Love, she tells Carter how I had reminded her that we first met nearly twenty years ago and tells him how I had shown her a picture of us (below) from the time – which was very sweet.
But – spoiler alert – it's towards the end of episode three that the drama around the GLAMOUR interview cranks up and Paris freaks out because on the day of the cover and interview's publication, she has still failed to tell her mother, Kathy and sister, Nicky about all the personal revelations she's discussed with me and that are due to come out in the book.
My interview flashes across the screen accompanied by high-octane drama music – with all the most impactful quotes highlighted, followed by text that reveals that the article is rapidly going viral being picked up in all major news outlets around the world.
The drama continues as the next few episodes focus on Paris attempting to talk to her Mum and sister about her traumatic past and eventually having a number of emotional conversations with her family about the incidents. It really is reality TV at its finest. But that's Paris for you, reality star extraordinaire as well as one of the most fascinating, self-aware and surprisingly profound celebrities I have ever interviewed. As she said to me, “The real me is someone who is strong and resilient, brave, smart and fun” adding: “I think I’ve just been through so many things. I’m a warrior, I’m a fighter, I’m brave. And I’m a badass.” And she sure is.
Paris in Love season two is available to watch now on NOW.
