Paris: The Memoir(66)
I was instantly on board. Producers initially wanted it to be the Hilton sisters, and I begged Nicky to do it with me, but Mom and Dad were not in favor. Too many unknowns. Too many people. Too close to home.
“Don’t be insane,” Nicky said. “You’ll embarrass yourself.”
“Not if it’s funny.”
“I don’t want to be funny,” she said. “I want to be classy, and if their intention was for us to look classy, the show would be about us living our lives as runway models at New York Fashion Week. This is not that.”
She had a point.
The theme song kinda says it all:
Let’s take two girls, both filthy rich,
From the bright lights into the sticks.
There was no doubt about how it was supposed to play out:
They’re both spoiled rotten.
Will they cry when they hit bottom?
Notice it says when—not if—they “hit bottom.” People expected this to be about two unrelatable rich bitches who get put in their place by “real” people. There was huge potential for humiliation. I needed to partner with someone who had no fear of looking silly—no fear of being silly—a brazen prank caller who knew how to party and was willing to lean into the ridiculous. This show would not have been what it is with anyone other than Nicole Richie.
I didn’t have to beg. She was there from hello, 10,000 percent.
The tight production schedule started in May 2003, and we worked sixteen-hour days through the oppressive heat of the Arkansas summer. We were given broad direction for building our characters—Nicole as the sassy troublemaker, me as the beautiful airhead—going for a Lucy and Ethel 2.0 dynamic. We had no clue how any of the crazy scenarios would play out; all we knew was that whatever happened, we were supposed to make it hilarious.
I think a lot of people assumed Nicole and I would look down on this rural family, act like bratty princesses, and then get put in our place. Again, I was the beautiful ditz; Nicole was the troublemaker. Tale as old as time. But we were living in a shiny new millennium, and that old storyline didn’t work for us. We wanted to tell a story about girls who go out into the world full of game on and conquer every obstacle in a completely creative, gutsy way. We had to dance along a very fine line: irreverent but respectful, sexy but approachable, bold but not bitchy. We had to slay the daily challenges by flipping the script in some funny way and then make some good come out of all of it. We didn’t overthink it at the time, but looking back, I hope the takeaway is this: The future belongs to girls who refuse to do as they’re told. Girl power doesn’t come from being rich or beautiful; it’s a combination of courage, kindness, and laughter.
The first season was shot on location in Altus, a small town in Arkansas. The production budget was not huge by Hollywood standards, but it meant a lot to this community. They welcomed us with open arms and went along with all our shenanigans. The mischief was never mean-spirited or disrespectful. Everyone in town knew us and wanted to be part of it.
We loved the Leding family. They were the kind of family Conrad Hilton aspired to and never had—the family my parents tried to force into existence until it blew up in their faces. The Ledings remind me of Carter’s salt-of-the-earth Midwestern family, which is the kind of family Carter and I hope to raise. Their multigenerational home was filled with functional love and support. I grew especially close to Curly, the grandmother, who was strong and fearless—like Gram Cracker—and to Braxton, the toddler who instantly fell in love with Tinkerbell. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that producers put us in a house with two teenage boys—Justin and Cayne. Our mission was to tease and torment them, but we adopted them as our little brothers instead.
The director had Nicole and me flirt and make out with a couple of local boys, Anthony and Chops, who we were supposedly dating. (Nicole and I were both in relationships IRL.) Randomly, I ran into Chops a few years ago at Netflix, where he’s now a finance executive. Apparently, he took to show business better than we took to cattle insemination.
Bunking together slumber party style on the Leding’s enclosed porch, Nicole and I lay there at night, cracking each other up and coordinating our outfits for the following day. Every morning, our thirteen-year-old selves came out to play. We had a crazy amount of fun and laughed until we cried, but I won’t lie; by the end of the shooting schedule—eighteen weeks of eighteen-hour days—we were beyond exhausted. It was so unbearably hot in Altus. At some point during the dog days of August, I called my mom, crying, trying to cover the phone with my hand, and said, “I hate it here.”
“Only three more days,” said Mom. “You can do this, honey.”
And then she sent a private jet loaded with food from Mr. Chow’s, a vivid demonstration of both the love of privilege and the privilege of love.
The big movies that summer were Finding Nemo and Matrix Reloaded. Six months before the debut of The Simple Life, the biggest shows on TV were CSI, Friends, and Joe Millionaire. We didn’t know yet who we’d be competing with or following. Obviously, a time slot following Joe Millionaire would be perfect, so we were praying for that.
While the first season of The Simple Life was in postproduction, Friendster and Myspace launched. Social media wasn’t a huge thing, but it was starting to be a thing, and I was interested. Here was a space where you could connect with Rupert Murdoch (user name Dirty Digger) or a friend from first grade. You could launch your homemade music in the same space where Nine Inch Nails were launching their new album. You could reinvent yourself and amplify whatever you were up to, which was incredibly exciting for us as the Simple Life rollout took shape.