Paris: The Memoir(68)
I got on a flight back to the US, trying to hide behind my sunglasses, but the lady sitting next to me could tell I was crying.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I shook my head.
Over the course of the fourteen-hour flight, she was incredibly kind, and eventually I opened up and told her what was happening. The next day there was a picture of me on the cover of Us Weekly with the headline “Paris Hilton Exclusive: My Side of the Story,” or something like that.
Mom was livid. “Why would you do an interview before you have a chance to process this?”
“I didn’t!” I kept insisting, and then I remembered the lady on the plane. She must have recorded the whole conversation. I don’t know who placed her in that seat next to me, but I imagine their kid went to a very nice college at my expense.
The thirty-seven-second clip provided proof of concept, I guess: a teaser to show how big a deal this was going to be, how much buzz it would create, and how much people would pay to see it. I imagine someone would need that in order to set up financing for production and distribution. If that was the intention, it worked. It was a very big deal. That was immediately obvious. Buzz was off the chain because—comedy gold—it was too easy. The potential for blond jokes, the opportunity for self-righteousness, the degradation of someone living a posh life. It was like an X-rated version of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
When the full version of the tape was released, the initial price point was around fifty bucks, which must have had a massive profit margin, because no one had to invest a dime in marketing. Late-night comedians, bloggers, and tabloid editors provided that for free. The tape was everywhere, and everyone was talking about it, shaking their heads, and saying I had no decency. Funny, no one mentioned the decency of people who watch creepy sex videos of teenage girls.
One morning I stopped into a neighborhood newsstand on Sunset Boulevard, a place where I went for coffee and magazines on a regular basis, and there was a huge display: “YES! We have the Paris Hilton Sex Tape!” The owner seemed baffled when I ripped the poster down and threw it in his face. He couldn’t understand why I was crying.
“What’s wrong with you?” I screamed. “You’re not a porn shop, you’re a family newsstand! My little brothers come in here to get ice cream!”
The impact the tape had on my career is impossible to quantify, but the absolute worst aspect of this horror show was the impact on my family. My mom just crumpled into bed and stayed there. My dad, red faced and furious, worked the phones, calling lawyers, calling spin doctors, trying to help me marshal any hope of damage control. The knee-jerk reaction was to summon a pack of rabid lawyers, but the consensus was that lawsuits would only bring more attention. Mom’s standard advice was “Don’t give it oxygen,” and that made sense to me. It often does, in a world where tearing down is so much easier than building up.
My parents were still living at the Waldorf, and a newspaper was left outside the door of every room first thing in the morning. Nicky got up early and ran down the hall, turning all the papers facedown, so Mom and Dad and the boys wouldn’t have to see the headlines and feel like they were walking a gauntlet. Barron and Conrad were plenty old enough to understand what it all meant, and they were so weirded out, they could hardly look at me. During the previous three years, from the time I got out of Provo, I had been trying to rebuild relationships with my siblings and mend the shattered bond between me and my parents. Now we were back to zero. Left of zero. Worse than ever.
I didn’t know at first if Fox would even go ahead with The Simple Life. All the positive energy and amazing buzz the team had worked so hard to build—everything about the show was dwarfed by the sex-tape scandal. I couldn’t face the cameras. I stayed hidden for several weeks, turning down every opportunity—interviews, club appearances, runways, magazine covers—sacrificing all the income I would have normally brought in. If Nicole or anyone else went out to continue the launch effort, questions about the sex tape dominated the conversation.
On December 2, 2003, The Simple Life debuted on Fox with thirteen million viewers, an astounding 79 percent of the adult audience. Reviews were moon-shot awesome, and the team decided it was time for me to step out of the shadows and address the scandal in some way. There were a lot of options. Every show wanted me to come on and be interviewed, but the one that made the most sense to me was an offer to play myself in a segment with Jimmy Fallon on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” It was a risk, but the script was brilliant, Jimmy was pitch perfect, and the sketch lives on as one of the great moments in SNL history.
JIMMY: As we agreed, we won’t be discussing the scandal that’s been in the paper the past few weeks.
ME: Thank you, Jimmy. I appreciate that.
JIMMY: So, your family—I don’t know if people know—owns hotels all over the world, right?
ME: Yes. They’re in New York, London, Paris . . .
JIMMY: Wait. So there actually is a Paris Hilton?
ME: Yes, there is.
JIMMY: Is it hard to get into the Paris Hilton?
ME: Actually, it’s a very exclusive hotel, no matter what you’ve heard.
JIMMY: I’ve heard the Paris Hilton is very beautiful.
ME: I’m glad that you’ve heard that.
JIMMY: Do they allow double occupancy at the Paris Hilton?
ME: No.