Paris: The Memoir(65)

All this was happening in the middle of the dot-com renaissance. Perez Hilton says he began blogging in the early 2000s “because it seemed easy.” And it was. The internet was a massive black hole, sucking up every bit of content it could find. Suddenly all these eyeballs were out there with no rules about what you could put in front of them. Celebrity gossip was the Chicken McNugget of the new information age: not especially good for you but delicious. And irresistible.

I was at the eye of that perfect storm.

“We’ve always had the celebrated ones,” David said, but this was something different. People didn’t start saying influencer until 2015, so I didn’t know what to call it or what it might become when it started happening. I didn’t know how to do anything other than live my life, for better or worse, so I just kept doing that as it all became larger than life.

You probably know what happened next.

Paris Hilton happened.





16

I ended up with a cameo in Zoolander, Ben Stiller’s male-model movie, along with David Bowie, Cuba Gooding Jr., Natalie Portman, Fabio, Lenny Kravitz, Sting, Gwen Stefani, Winona Ryder, Lil’ Kim, and Lance Bass. Oh, and Ben Stiller! It was a quick scene, but I was thrilled to be part of it. And I had dialogue with Ben himself!

ME: Hey, Derek, you rule.

BEN: Thanks, Paris. I appreciate that.

When they talked about all the fun Zoolander cameos in the press, they referred to me as “style icon Paris Hilton”—probably because they didn’t know what else to call me—and I liked the sound of that.

In February 2001, I turned twenty, happy to leave the dumpster fire of my teens behind. Nicky graduated from Sacred Heart School, and we celebrated with a big party at the Bryant Park Hotel. Mom and Dad were so proud of the fabulous young woman she’d become. I was overjoyed that Nicky was free and available for adventure. Now she could come and go between New York and LA—and London and Paris and Tokyo—to walk runways, go to parties and premieres, and just hang out with me and my friends.

I started dating Jason Shaw, who was really the perfect boyfriend. If I could have been the perfect girlfriend, maybe we’d still be a thing. I first saw him on the curb in front of the Four Seasons in LA, waiting for valet parking, and recognized him from the towering Tommy Hilfiger billboard that featured him stretched out in his underwear like ten stories tall in Times Square. He was with Mark Vanderloo, and they looked like a couple of Greek gods out for a stroll.

Jason never intended to be an underwear model. He wasn’t the Zoolander stereotype. Key to his unique look was a rare authenticity. He was a lovely, down-to-earth guy from Chicago. He had a degree in history. According to legend, a scout spotted him, signed him to a huge agency, and like ten seconds later, Tommy Hilfiger offered him the kind of crazy multiyear deal we all dreamed of. Whenever my schedule allowed, I went with him to shoots in Amsterdam, Milan, and anywhere else Hilfiger was sending him.

Jason bought a house on Kings Road where we could live together, but we were never home for long. During the aughts, I was in the air and on the road 150 to 200 days a year. (Between 2010 and 2020, that ramped up to 250 days a year.) In spring 2002, I celebrated my twenty-first birthday with that first epic skydive and global birthday rager. Jason gave me a silver Porsche—dream car, dream guy. I got to see all the people I loved and thousands of people who loved me. And I looked amazing.

Gram Cracker died a few weeks after my birthday. We knew for a long time that it was coming, but it still felt like a body slam. Mom, Kim, and Kyle were all with her at the end. Mom told me they were holding her hands and crying when she died. Suddenly they heard cupboard doors banging open and slamming shut. They ran to the kitchen, and there was no one there.

The hospice nurse said, “She was saying goodbye.”

Hearing that comforted me. I liked the idea of Gram Cracker’s spirit—and my own spirit someday—moving through the room like a windstorm on the way to Heaven. I believe in God, and I hope that Heaven means we’ll all be the best versions of ourselves, but death scares me. It’s my only real fear.

Mom took it so hard. I didn’t know how to help her. She did all the things you’re supposed to do when someone dies, all the business and details. My mom is incredibly strong on the outside, but she feels things deeply. The loss of her mom—and the loss of Nanu two years later—was brutal. My mom’s defining character trait is joie de vivre. She’s joyful—like, full of joy—so it scared me to see her so sad. I hate to admit it, but maybe this was the first time I was as sensitive to her feelings as I was to my own.

For me, it was strange to think of Gram Cracker as gone, because I felt closer to her than ever. She was with me. Hummingbirds came and went, just like she said they would. A general hum of energy and light carried me through acting classes and auditions, both of which I hate. I get so insecure, and I hate feeling judged. I just wanted to work.

Summer came, and so many good things were happening. Tinkerbell! What a gift when she came into my life. I did a horror flick called Nine Lives and an artsy short called QIK2JDG, had a fun bit part in Wonderland, which starred Val Kilmer, Lisa Kudrow, Carrie Fisher, and Christina Applegate, and did a cute cameo in a rave scene with Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat.

I met with producers at Fox, who pitched me an idea for a show that crossed the streams between fiction and reality, a mash-up of the scripted, fish-out-of-water sitcom Green Acres (starring Papa’s ex-step-aunt-in-law Eva Gabor) and a documentary-style reality series with the added twist of episodic challenges. There had never been a show like this before, and there hasn’t been one since. The Simple Life was a reality TV groundbreaker that no one—including me—has ever been able to repeat.