Paris Hilton’s New Youtube Documentary, This is Paris

“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 May.

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 AT THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL.

This Is Paris will be entered in the festival as part of the Spotlight Documentary category. The famed festival takes place in New York each spring, and has premiered many landmark films. This year, Tribeca will run from April 15th through the 26th, but the date of This Is Paris screening has not yet been announced. Overall, the 2020 festival will include 115 films from 124 filmmakers from across 33 different countries.

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Hilton, producer Aaron Saidman, and director Alexandra Dean at the TCA event.

David LivingstonGetty Images

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.”

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Hilton and Nicole Richie at the peak of their Simple Life fame.

Frazer HarrisonGetty Images

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.”

Watch a teaser for the program below:

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