Paris Hilton was the center of it all. Now she’s losing ‘character’: NPR

Before the word “influencer” was a common term, before Instagram and TikTok allowed users to document every moment of their lives in real time, Paris Hilton was the woman at the center of it all.

A platinum blonde heiress with a mega successful reality show. A mainstay of tabloid gossip, thanks to an ever-present crowd of paparazzi and a leaked sex tape. A consummate party girl who leveraged her star power to launch a career in modeling and music. An early emblem of femininity and exuberance, whose breathy baby voice still evokes memories of the catchphrase “It’s hot.”

Now Hilton, 42, is ready to harness her voice in a new way after spending years living as what she describes as a manufactured caricature — in part to protect herself.

“I just feel for so long that I’ve been misunderstood and underappreciated,” Hilton told NPR. “And I feel like for the last over two decades in this business, my story has been told by other people. And I was just ready to get real and tell my truth.”

Much of that truth involves unpacking the trauma of some of her teenage experiences in her new book, Paris: The Book of Memories, which has just been released. In it, Hilton describes an inappropriate relationship with a teacher when she was a minor; sexual assault; and the abuse she experienced during the years she spent in boarding schools allegedly for “troubled teenagers”.

Hilton said her distraught parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, decided to send her to these intensive residential schools after she spent years sneaking out of her home at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York to go clubbing, and she was kicked out of several elite schools. schools.

Hilton also shares several fond memories of her youth and stories that set her on a path that culture would later deride as being “famous for being famous.” There are stories of teenage antics with her sister, Nicky, including an attempt to sneak a young Khloe Kardashian into a bar by dressing her in a long wig and a floppy black hat. There are reflections on how an adult ADHD diagnosis changed her life for the better. Hilton also gives her take on the modern influencer, a title she thinks she deserves a fair share of credit for.

“I’ve been doing it for so long, even before there was a name for it,” Hilton told NPR. “And it’s just amazing to see that something that I started so long ago has now become like a full-fledged career and started this whole new genre of celebrity.”

But Hilton also writes about the ubiquity of pop culture serving as a way to cope with her experience in the so-called troubled teen industry. In the book, Hilton describes being dragged out of her bed in the middle of the night by two men and being flown across the country to attend a “therapeutic” school run by the now-defunct CEDU Educational Services. There she was subjected to an invasive cavity search, she writes. She was initially not allowed to wear shoes – and was told that it was a privilege she had to earn. Students were forced to participate in what Hilton called “raps,” a nightly ritual in which they were forced to insult and demean each other for hours.

“I know it wasn’t my family’s fault. They were lied to and manipulated,” Hilton told NPR. “My parents had no idea. When I was there, they always monitored every phone call, and if I tried to say anything, (the school) would immediately hang up … and take away my phone privileges, and then just tell my parents : ‘Oh, she’s lying. She just wants to leave. She’s manipulative.’

At times, passages of the memoir read like a thriller, as Hilton describes several attempts to escape CEDU facilities and later Provo Canyon School, where she writes of spending hours in solitary confinement, often without clothes, and being supplied with pills that her to feel like “my head was disconnected from my body.”

Hilton first revealed her experiences to film director Alexandra Dean in the 2020 documentary, This is Paris. It was a conversation she says she never planned to have.

“When I got out of there, I made a promise to myself that I would never tell anyone about it. And this was not part of my story,” Hilton told NPR. “And that’s why I basically created this character, Paris Hilton, to not have to think about or feel the trauma that I went through and experienced.”

In a statement on the school’s website, Provo Canyon School noted that it changed ownership in August 2000 after Hilton was a student there, and that the school does not “endorse or promote any form of abuse.”

“We are committed to providing high quality care for young people with special and often complex emotional, behavioral and psychiatric needs,” the statement said.

Hilton said that while it has been “very scary and really difficult” to reveal that trauma publicly, writing her memoir has also lifted a weight.

“I just know that there are so many girls, boys, women, men who have been through the same thing as me. And they’re holding on to a shame. And that shame shouldn’t be on us. It should be on the people, that hurt us,” she told NPR.

The process of trying to let go of that pain and shame changed everything about her world, she says, including her romantic relationships.

She met now husband Carter Reum, a venture capitalist, in 2019 at a family Thanksgiving dinner in the Hamptons. In the book, Hilton describes telling Reum about the shocking revelations in This is Paris. She says it was the first time she “started a relationship with full openness.”

“I feel so lucky that I found him,” Hilton told NPR of Reum, whom she married in 2021. “It was the first time I really let down the walls that I had around my heart. I just feel , that timing is everything. , and Carter is just my twin flame.”

This year, Hilton and Reum announced the birth of their first child, Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum, via surrogate after more than two years of IVF treatments. Hilton says that with motherhood, some of her priorities have changed.

“Now that I’m a mom, it’s a lot easier to say no. Before, I didn’t have, you know, anything like that. So this is the most important thing in my life, and I want to be there for all the special moments.”

Still, as Hilton indicated to NPR, her spirit of risk-taking remains — but these days it involves more honesty.

“I think it’s so important for people to come out and be vulnerable and tell their stories, because life isn’t perfect,” Hilton said. “And it’s important for others to know that they’re not alone and that we’re all going through the same thing.”

Ashley Brown and Kat Lonsdorf contributed to this report.