Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie see 'The Simple Life' as a love letter to their 20s

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie didn’t set out to revolutionize the reality television landscape with The Simple Life. It just kind of happened.

“[The show] was the first of its kind,” Hilton told Rebecca Alter, Vulture staff writer, during the 10th annual Vulture Festival on Nov. 17. “Nicole and I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We were just ourselves, and we were just having fun. It wasn’t like we were planning or thinking of something. It just all happened very authentically and organically.”

Fox’s Simple Life premiered on Dec. 2, 2003. For five seasons, the reality series followed Hilton and Richie, best friends and Los Angeles socialites, as they traveled around the country and immersed themselves in the culture and community of smaller towns. In Season 1, the girls stayed with a family in Arkansas who showed them the ropes of jobs like working on a farm or at a fast food restaurant.

Hilton and Richie were glamorous fish out of water. The result was a surprising amount of earnest comedy and an unprecedented format of reality television.

Richie sees the show as a love letter to their 20s. Hilton agreed.

“We were in a different city every day. We were hip to the show at that point, so we were really going in, doing our jobs, saying goodnight on camera and then going out after we would wrap,” she explained. “I view the whole time we shot that show as just us being in our 20s, and us just having freedom to really do what we want and take that time, and just be with each other. ... I really cherish my 20s and the show is such a huge part of that.”

Hilton and Richie were both 22 when The Simple Life premiered, but they’d been friends for years. The pair have known each other since they were 2 years old.

“We were neighbors and we could see each other’s windows from each other’s houses,” Richie said. “What we did one time when our parents stopped us from hanging out is we bought megaphones. Our two houses were separated by the Bel-Air Country Club ... we took the megaphones at 11 in the morning, and we would be singing ... through the hills of Bel Air until they would let us hang out again.”

Now, Hilton and Richie are reuniting on the small screen with Paris & Nicole: The Encore, a three-part special premiering on Peacock Dec. 12, in which they attempt to produce an opera that revolves around their self-coined term “Sanasa.” For those that are unfamiliar, “Sanasa” is the name of a song Hilton and Richie wrote when they were 7 years old. It became a long-running joke among fans of The Simple Life, as the pair often sang it as a “vibe check” while filming.

“[Hilton] came to my house. We had tacos and we just hung out, and we talked about if we were going to do something again, if we were going to have a reunion, what would that look like and what would that be? And we wanted to do it in our own way. And we got to do that, and it’s just been the best experience ever,” Richie said.

Over four decades after they met, their friendship is still going strong.

“I’m allergic to boring people,” Hilton said. “Nicole is the most fun, most hilarious, most real, coolest, biggest heart. And I’ve loved her since the moment I met her when I was a little 2-year-old girl. And I’ll love you until the end of time.”

“It’s really important to give people space to go through their own journeys,” Richie said of their decades-spanning friendship. “And it’s truly impossible for you and anyone to have parallel lives the whole time ... I truly believe the deepest form of love is allowing someone to be who they are.”

Paris & Nicole: The Encore premieres Dec. 12 on Peacock.

Correction, Nov. 20, 2024: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Vulture reporter who spoke to Hilton. It was Rebecca Alter.