Hilton and Nicole Richie answered who they most look up to in an Oct. 9 interview with ‘W Magazine’
Paris Hilton has a royal role model.
In a new interview with W Magazine ahead of her reboot of The Simple Life with with Nicole Richie, Hilton, 43, was asked if there were any women she looked up to as role models.
“Princess Diana had such a huge heart and was always using her platform to help children and help the world be a better place,” Hilton responded, adding that actress Marilyn Monroe “is my ultimate icon.”
This isn’t the first time Hilton has spoken about her admiration for the late Princess of Wales, who died at 36 following a car accident on Aug. 31, 1997. In a March 2023 interview on the “Magic Radio Breakfast” show promoting her book, Paris: The Memoir released that same month, Hilton called Princess Diana one of her “idols” — and also spoke out about parallels between her life and Prince Harry’s. Harry, too, released a memoir in 2023, Spare, which came out in January. Hilton, who also said on the show she’d seen Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, said she “knew how hard” being famous could be, per the Evening Standard.
Of Spare, Hilton said on the program, “I did read it, and I watched the series, as well, an I thought ‘He has been through so much.’ I can’t imagine just losing my mum.”
She added of Harry’s mother that “Princess Diana was always one of my idols.”
Though from a well-known family herself, Hilton first experienced global fame after The Simple Life premiered in 2003, when Hilton was in her early 20s. She expressed empathy that Prince Harry, 40, has never known life without constant press attention.
“It just breaks my heart they had to go through that, and I know how it is with the media — it can be so hard when they are just invading your lives constantly. And he has had that his entire life,” she said last year.
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In the interview with W Magazine alongside Richie, released on Oct. 9, Hilton said of the forthcoming The Simple Life reality series on Peacock, “Nicole and I together is magic. We have this dynamic that’s so real, and there’s just so much history behind it.”
She added, “Both of us have been approached so many times over the years with different concepts, but it was perfect timing. It was so fun to spend every day together. Every time I’m with Nicole, I feel like we’re teenagers again.”