Paris Hilton has revealed she’s ‘not a dumb blonde’ and is just really good at playing one.
While sitting down with TODAY to promote her new UberEats partnership in collaboration with Australian icon Bindi Irwin, the socialite disclosed she acted dim-witted while on The Simple Life.
She said: “I’m happy that now people know that I'm not a dumb blonde, I'm just very good at pretending to be one."
Hilton also spoke of her documentary This Is Paris, which shared how she endured countless instances of abuse while being sent away to psychiatric youth treatment facilities when she was a teen.
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While attending Provo Canyon School, the star said she was often placed in solitary confinement and forced to take medication without a diagnosis.
In the same interview, Hilton also revealed that the ‘barbie doll’ character she invented on The Simple Life was a ‘trauma response’ from her treatment at Provo.
She said: “I feel I’ve been through so much in life, and playing that character I think was just a trauma response because it was such a painful and traumatic experience to think about.”
Since her documentary was released in 2020, Hilton has rallied against treatment centres for troubled teens and even testified in court about the emotional and physical abuse inflicted in such facilities.
Last year, the 41-year-old appeared before Utah State Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee, calling for the government to regulate schools like Provo more closely, according to Metro.
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The Simple Life star said in court: “My name is Paris Hilton, I am an institutional abuse survivor and I speak today on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of children currently in residential care facilities across the United States.”
She added: “I was verbally, mentally and physically abused on a daily basis. I was cut off from the outside world and stripped of all my human rights.”
Hilton also shared that there was also zero privacy at the facility and that staff members would watch her shower naked, leaving her to feel ‘violated’.
She also said: “I cannot go to sleep at night knowing that there are children that are enduring the same abuse that I and so many others went through. Neither should you. I am proof that money doesn’t protect against abuse.”
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However, Provo Canyon School has since denied the claims, saying they ‘do not condone any forms of abuse’.
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