Why Has Hollywood Been So Determined to Make Paris Hilton a TV Star?

Last week's announcement that Paris Hilton would be partnering with Elon Musk's X (formerly and still more widely known as Twitter) for content-creation opportunities was a reminder that we are 20 years into the great Paris Hilton fame project. The Simple Life, the reality show that took Paris from the New York City gossip pages to network reality TV, premiered December 2, 2003 on Fox. In the two decades since that cultural blip, pop culture gatekeepers have continuously attempted to establish Paris as a viable television personality. And despite the fact that her contemporaries and even less-glamorous family members have legitimately thrived on reality TV, none of the projects centered around her have taken off.

The complicated nature of her entry into greater fame in 2003 involved a leaked sex tape that became a tabloid bonanza. Prior to that, Paris had been a socialite-about-town, a New York City party girl — in short, tabloid fodder. But the gossip industry was poised to go nuclear with the rise of TMZ, and Paris found herself at the intersection of that new brand of aggressive celebrity reporting, the ultra-confessional sensibility of reality TV, and the heyday of pop-star figures like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Lindsay Lohan.

Paris was controversial, the flashpoint for an era of people who were "famous for being famous." Of course, that kind of fame has always existed; heiresses will always find their way into a gossip column or a Vogue spread. But the high levels of access afforded to the social media generation made Paris a much bigger celebrity than she might've been in any other era. The height of Paris Hilton envy is documented in the Bling Ring case, where a bunch of high school kids broke into the homes of Paris and her contemporaries looking to get a taste of her life.

But Hollywood has always seen potential in Paris as a screen star. On the heels of the sex tape story, Fox cast Paris and fellow rich party girl Nicole Richie in The Simple Life, a reality show with the deeply simple premise of "let's throw these pampered, dumb, rich girls onto a farm and see what happens." It lasted for five seasons, but while Paris exited the series exactly as famous as she'd been when she started, Nicole was clearly the breakout star.

After The Simple Life, the "movement" to make Paris a star continued, with offers for everything from a pop single to roles in films like the House of Wax remake to countless guest appearances on shows like The O.C. and Veronica Mars. But more than anything, Hollywood has been determined to make Paris Hilton a reality TV star. It hasn't been just one network or producer, either — attempts have been made from every corner of the reality TV world. The Simple Life was produced by The Real World masterminds Bunim-Murray Productions. Paris Hilton's My New BFF, the 2008 show where ordinary people competed to be "friends" with the heiress, was the product of the VH1 "Celebreality" production tree. Oxygen's The World According to Paris was created by Hell's Kitchen producer Arthur Smith, whom you’d think was actually behind Netflix's Cooking With Paris, but that show's the brainchild of Aaron Saidman and Eli Holzman, the creators of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath and Project Runway, respectively. Peacock's Paris in Love comes from legendary/infamous executive producer Mike Darnell, who was head of programming at Fox when The Simple Life was greenlit. That's a veritable survey of the reality TV landscape over the last 20 years, and none of them could turn Paris Hilton into a reality star.

The reality TV era advanced the notion that pretty much anyone could end up as the center of a show. Unsurprisingly, though, a lot of reality shows have been made about rich people, from The Osbournes to The Apprentice to Bling Empire. "Watching Rich People Do Things" has become a subgenre of its own. The assumption that the wealthy are just inherently more interesting is the cornerstone of the industry, and most likely a huge part of why these producers keep lining up to take their shot at a Paris Hilton show. Surely someone will be able to make a show work with someone this wealthy, skinny, famous, and white. She's got all the advantages!

In the 2020 documentary This Is Paris, Paris revealed that her "dumb blond" persona and affected baby voice were essentially an act that she put on for the cameras. The idea that the party girl was playing around with notions of celebrity and sexism finally made her seem like an interesting, willful person. It seemed for a second that she was about to have a second life as a Hollywood mastermind, puppeting a vapid party-girl persona because that's what sells. The temptation to declare her a secret genius of image-making was incredibly strong. And yet immediately after, Paris returned to that same old persona for Cooking With Paris, full of catchphrases and wealthy-baby affectations.

It's been 20 years of the Paris Hilton Project, and the most exciting it's ever gotten was when she pissed off Tina Fey enough while hosting Saturday Night Live, that Fey later called her a "piece of sh*t," saying Paris was disrespectful to the cast and crew and asked if she could do a sketch as Jessica Simpson to make fun of her weight.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.