“This is completely different from anything I’ve ever done,” heiress and socialite Paris Hilton said in the teaser video for her new documentary, a YouTube Original entitled This Is Paris, which is set to premier this September.
The documentary promises to give an inside look into Hilton’s day-to-day life, offering an unfiltered and honest perspective on the ur-reality star. Emmy-winning director Alexandra Dean and her team followed Hilton around the world for a year, capturing moments, conducting revealing interviews, and telling never-before-heard stories about Hilton’s life.
Hilton told Deadline that shooting the documentary was both “emotional” and “raw.” “I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” she said. “In this film I discuss things I’ve never discussed before. I hope that people are going to see who I truly am.”
Here's what we know about the project so far:
The documentary will premier on YouTube.
This Is Paris will debut on September 14 on Hilton's YouTube channel. It can be streamed for free with ads or, if viewers sign up for YouTube premium, they can watch the feature's extended cut. The film was originally supposed to premier as part of the Spotlight Documentary category at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hilton will no longer play a "character."
At a Television Critic’s Association press event, Hilton admitted that most of her public persona was based on a carefully crafted character. In the documentary, the high-voiced, ditzy, blonde caricature of years passed falls away, unveiling a more true-to-life Paris Hilton. “Everything I’ve ever done before was more of me just playing that character again,” Hilton said in her teaser. “But with this I really just wanted to pull the curtain back and show my real life and talk about things that were very hard to talk about and things that I’ve experienced in life that I’ve never talked about before.”
Producer Aaron Saidman agreed. “The film, in a way, is a response to that early persona and the character that she was portraying," he said. "It’s an attempt to deconstruct that and learn who she is as a woman and what she’s been through. That complex nature of a human being that we often don’t stop to examine because they’re a celebrity or an icon.”
Indeed, This Is Paris looks at a different side of its subject. The documentary includes interviews with Hilton’s mother, Kathy Hilton, and her normally (more) private sister, Nicky Hilton Rothschild. Notably, the This Is Paris YouTube description states that “Paris speaks publicly for the first time about heartbreaking trauma and pivotal moments in her early life that forged who she is today.”
This isn't Hilton's first foray into reality entertainment.
While Hilton insists that This Is Paris differs greatly from her prior reality appearances, it is hard to separate the star from her past. Hilton’s breakout role came when she was just 19 years old, when she was cast alongside her friend Nicole Richie in the reality show, The Simple Life. On the show, the two young women appeared as fish-out-of-water rich girls, unable to handle an average life. Hilton said the show was pitched as “Green Acres” meets “Clueless.”
After The Simple Life ended in 2007, Hilton went on to star in documentary film Paris, Not France and the MTV reality series Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, neither of which garnered much acclaim. In all of these reality shows, Hilton put on the “dumb blonde” persona that she is now rejecting.
“I was in on the joke. People thought that’s who I really was,” Hilton said. “I’ve been judged on a character that I created at the beginning of my career and now I feel like it’s really time that people see who the real Paris is.”
But now, after stints as an actress, a reality star, a shoe designer, and a DJ, Hilton hopes to show her true personality, without hiding behind a character. As the YouTube description states, the film aims to “reveal the woman behind the icon and shed new light on our view of celebrity, and the insta-fame culture that Paris helped to create.”
So, why is Hilton now choosing to show us this side of her? “It’s a different time,” she said. “It’s about being real.”
The star opens up about struggles she's faced.
In the new documentary, Hilton shares never-before-heard stories from her adolescence, which was not as charmed as it looked. When Hilton was a teen, she lived in New York City's Waldorf Astoria hotel, along with her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, and three younger siblings.
Paris, however, was quite the rebellious teen, sneaking off to nightlife venues far before she was of age.
“It was so easy to sneak out and go to clubs and parties,” Hilton told People. “My parents were so strict that it made me want to rebel. They’d [punish me] by taking away my cell phone, taking away my credit card, but it didn’t work. I would still go out on my own.”
Eventually, Hilton's parents had enough of their daughter's defiance, and sent to her to a series of boarding schools, the last of which was Provo Canyon School, where Hilton spent 11 months. There, Hilton says she faced severe physical, mental, and emotional abuse daily.
“It was supposed to be a school, but [classes] were not the focus at all,” Hilton said. “From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture.”
While the school claimed to focus on mental and behavioral development, Hilton described trauma and suffering. “The staff would say terrible things. They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me,” Hilton said. “I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”
In This Is Paris, Hilton will elaborate on this experience and recovering from abuse. When the heiress turned eighteen, she left the school, but the effects of its practices lingered. Three of Hilton's classmates from Provo Canyon will also appear in the documentary, making similar allegations against the school.
Hilton did not speak about her experience for a long time, but now believes in the benefits of facing her past. “It feels like my nightmare is over,” she said. “And I’m going to watch the movie with my parents—I think it will be good for us, but emotional too. There are no more secrets.”