Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie might now not be driving cross-country in a pink pickup truck or pouring bleach on pool tables in Arkansas, however they nonetheless greet one another with the nicknames they imparted on each other once they starred in “The Simple Life.”
“Hi, Sill,” Richie says casually over the telephone from Los Angeles, to which Hilton replies sweetly, “Hi, Bill.” It’s nearly as if greater than 20 years haven’t handed. Besides now, Richie can’t think about herself in any of the quintessentially Y2K outfits she wore on the present. “But they really are having a comeback for people, so that’s … nice for them,” she quips.
With the premiere of “The Simple Life” in 2003 on Fox, Hilton — the heiress to the eponymous resort chain — and Richie — the adoptive daughter of Lionel Richie, grew to become proto-reality stars. The preliminary idea? Two 20-year-old socialites and besties abandon their lives in Los Angeles to reside in rural, blue-collar America. Over the course of 5 seasons, the present advanced, and Richie and Hilton endured a sequence of untamed misadventures: selecting up odd jobs at a dairy farm (“one of the hardest,” based on Richie) and the fast-food chain Sonic, touring by Greyhound bus alongside the East Coast to numerous internships, “doing a wife swap” with varied households, and dealing as camp counselors.
However within the years since “The Simple Life” was canceled after its last two seasons aired on E!, it has gained a brand new set of adoring followers. Like pleated minis, low-rise denims and crop tops, “The Simple Life” has made a comeback within the tradition. By way of intelligent Halloween costumes, scene reenactments and snippets of the sequence on TikTok, a brand new era is experiencing the thrill and horrors of “The Simple Life.” Even Richie’s youngsters and her youngsters’ associates have been watching it. And it is smart that the present is having a resurgence: It’s stuffed with moments which have turn out to be crystallized within the annals of actuality TV historical past, like when Hilton requested in the event that they promote “wall stuff” at Walmart or when she fried bacon with an iron. There’s additionally memorable scenes of Richie shoving her hand in a cow’s rectum (and chasing Hilton with the feces-covered glove) and the second she dropped and vacuumed ashes at a funeral dwelling (they weren’t actual however reported to be cat litter and cement).
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1. Hilton, left, and Richie at a grocery store in Season 1 of “The Simple Life.” (Michael Yarish/Fox) 2. A scene the place Hilton, left, and Richie needed to work on a dairy farm. (Michael Yarish/Fox)
“It feels amazing to be the pioneers and OGs who have really inspired so many others to try and do similar shows,” says Hilton, 43. “I’m really proud of what Nicole and I did, just being trailblazers in that area.”
For Hilton and Richie, “The Simple Life” was a lightning-in-a-bottle expertise: They don’t imagine the present might exist right now, when individuals are so depending on digital units. “Season 1 through 3, we really did not have phones. We had no idea where we were going. We just completely left our lives for a month straight,” remembers Richie, 43. She couldn’t think about 20-year-olds now being keen to surrender their telephones for a month. “We were truly cut off from the world.”
For years, Hilton and Richie had fielded reunion requests for “The Simple Life,” however it wasn’t till final yr that they really thought of it. Over Christmas break, the pair exchanged a sequence of “giggly” and “friendly” texts about paying tribute to the hit present.
“We agreed to meet about it in the new year, and it all just kind of took off from there,” Richie says.
“I’m really proud of what Nicole and I did, just being trailblazers in that area,” says Hilton of the fact TV sequence “The Simple Life.” (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Instances)
Richie’s youngsters and their associates have watched “A Simple Life,” which has skilled a resurgence on social media like TikTok. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Instances)
Richie invited Hilton over to observe elements of the present since she hadn’t seen a full episode because it debuted. “It was very funny,” Richie says; nonetheless, she admits she discovered one facet of it probably the most “cringe.” “I have a hard time listening to my own voice,” she sighs. “It was so constant throughout the episode.”
However they weren’t able to tackle a full season of a sequence. As an alternative, the pair opted for a three-part particular that premieres Thursday on Peacock, titled “Paris & Nicole: The Encore,” to coincide with the present’s twentieth anniversary. “We just thought a three-part special would be the perfect amount for this type of show,” Hilton says.
Whereas the particular options Richie and Hilton visiting their outdated “Simple Life” haunts in Arkansas, just like the bar Alligator Rays and, after all, Walmart, it additionally checks in on the individuals they met throughout their hijinks greater than 20 years in the past. And as a substitute of taking over totally different jobs, this time they’ve one overarching challenge: to create “a next-level opera” out of their inside joke-meets-vibe test track “Sanasa,” made well-known on “The Simple Life.”
In response to Hilton and Richie, they got here up with the idea themselves and fleshed it out earlier than sharing it with anybody. Actually, it started as a joke. “We were laughing about how absurd it would be if we turned ‘Sanasa’ into an opera, and once it came out of one of our mouths, we were like, ‘That is psychotic, and therefore we should do it,’” Richie says.
Hilton and Richie in the course of the efficiency of their opera in “Paris & Nicole: The Encore.”
(Christine Bartolucci / Peacock)
The ladies aimed to re-create the fish-out-of-water idea that made “The Simple Life” such compelling tv within the first place. Tackling an opera — an space that neither had experience in — appeared like the proper alternative. “We really wanted to just throw ourselves into this world,” Richie says. That meant assembly with top-tier artists and consultants within the area akin to Thomas Adès and opera producer Beth Morrison.
For the opera, Hilton and Richie opted to chronicle their relationship all through the years, from their childhood friendship to their prolific careers, which incorporates memorable vignettes of “The Simple Life.” (Past the present, Hilton is a businesswoman, musician and DJ, and Richie is an actor, designer and founding father of the approach to life model Home of Harlow.)
The duo even forged youthful variations of themselves to kick off the manufacturing. The little woman who performs a youthful Richie was the daughter of an acquaintance, and Hilton’s youthful alter ego was forged from a TikTok video that her husband, Carter Reum, despatched her, the place the woman and her sister had been asking to nanny their youngsters, London and Phoenix. “They were singing ‘Sanasa,’” Hilton says of the video. “So when we were putting together the opera, this little girl was the first person I thought of to play me.”
“We were laughing about how absurd it would be if we turned ‘Sanasa’ into an opera, and once it came out of one of our mouths, we were like, ‘That is psychotic, and therefore we should do it,’” says Richie, proper, with Hilton.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)
Within the opera, Hilton and Richie additionally nod to the rift the pair famously endured in 2005. In response to Hilton, their public falling-out was much less about any private points between them and extra in regards to the pervasive nature of early 2000s tabloid tradition.
“During the 2000s, especially, the media was targeting a certain group of girls that Nicole and I were part of,” Hilton says. “So just a lot of the time [they were] inventing stories, trying to pit women against each other, trying to create feuds when there was none.”
It was irritating, she says, as a result of “if you were in [Hollywood], you knew what they were doing, but the outside world had no idea.”
When Hilton and Richie had been able to debut their opera, they invited followers, family and friends — even their outdated orchestra from center faculty. However nobody knew what to anticipate. “They were just told to show up,” Richie says. “So they were definitely surprised when they found out that it was an opera.”
After the joys of constructing an opera, Hilton and Richie are actually targeted on what’s subsequent for every of them. Hilton is increasing her model together with her media firm, 11:11 Media, and is concentrated on writing her third album. She’s additionally anticipating the discharge of her thirtieth perfume, “Iconic,” in 2025.
In the meantime, Richie is concentrated on her ardour for performing. Writing and creating exhibits, she says, has introduced her infinite quantities of pleasure. So, does that depart room for the opportunity of them teaming up for an prolonged model of “The Encore”? It’s a powerful perhaps.
“We haven’t discussed anything official yet,” Richie says, earlier than Hilton provides: “We’ll see how we feel about everything after and see if we want to do more seasons of it.”