Paris Hilton has claimed she was “villainised” by the media at the height of her celebrity status.
In the mid-2000s, the heiress, socialite and reality star was almost permanently in the headlines, off the back of her fame in shows like The Simple Life, which co-starred Nicole Ritchie.
Reflecting on this period in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Paris said she and a number of other young women were picked on in the press “for sport”.
“The way that I was treated – myself, Britney [Spears], Lindsay [Lohan], all of us – it was a sport,” she said.
“We were just young girls discovering life, going out to a party. And we were villainised for it.”
In recent years, there’s been something of a reckoning over how a number of high-profile stars were treated in the press in the mid-2000s, thanks to documentaries like Framing Britney Spears and Celebrity: A 21st Century Story.
Last year, Paris received public apologies from US comedians Sarah Silverman and David Letterman for jokes they made about her during that period.
She previously spoke about suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after her private sex tape was leaked online and later sold without her consent.
“When it happened, people were so mean about it to me,” she said. “The way that I was spoken about on nightly talk shows and the media, to see things with my family was just heartbreaking.
“I would be in tears every single day, I didn’t want to leave my house, I felt like my life was over.”
Paris married entrepreneur Carter Reum in 2021, with the pair announcing the birth of their first child last month.