There’s a scene from The Easy Life that’s endlessly (oven-)baked into my reminiscence. Lodge heiress Paris Hilton had cooked her “well-known” lasagna for the household of standard People she and troublesome sidekick Nicole Richie had been enjoying home with. I bear in mind, particularly, how unpolished the lasagna seemed. It was just like the anti-Instagram aesthetic: an ungodly quantity of cheap-looking, pre-grated cheese. Pink sauce seeping over the perimeters. I knew it could make Italians shudder, however secretly, I assumed it seemed scrumptious.
The Easy Life turns 20 years outdated this week. It would seem to be a essentially foolish actuality present about two pioneering nepo infants being dragged out of their fancy lives to “work” alongside common People—and it was. However The Easy Life additionally represents a societal shift: It remodeled its leads from rich-kid socialites into A-list celebrities—a sort of worldwide fame beforehand reserved for actors, singers, or athletes with conventional “expertise.” Now, the truth TV medium is maneuvering to attempt to recapture The Easy Life’s naivety. This 12 months, long-running exhibits have purposefully gone “again to fundamentals,” in an try to rediscover what followers first preferred about them. There has additionally been a wave of early-2000s reboots, plus new exhibits that draw inspiration from an period when the medium felt lighter to eat. Can actuality TV actually reclaim its innocence?
In 2003, when The Easy Life premiered on Fox, we had already began to see how actuality TV may flip extraordinary folks into celebrities. MTV’s The Actual World—a present that, every season, adopted a unique group of younger folks residing collectively in a metropolis like San Francisco or New York—grew to become an early actuality TV phenomenon. In the US, 50 million folks watched the primary season finale of Survivor, and within the U.Okay., early seasons of Massive Brother additionally drew enormous rankings. These exhibits had been typical of early actuality programming, in that they branded themselves as “social experiments.” What occurs when folks attempt to survive collectively on a distant island? Or are locked in a home with no contact with the skin world?
At that time, celebrities had been turning into reality-TV-curious. MTV was already displaying us stars’ houses on Cribs, after which there have been The Osbournes and Newlyweds—a surprisingly addictive actuality present starring divorced-couple-in-the-making Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. The Easy Life was totally different, although. Masterminded by the identical producers as The Actual World, the present staged a conflict between “common” and filthy-rich folks, to ask a query: What occurs while you take away the bank cards from two heiresses and make them work for a residing?
On the identical time, it was firstly leisure. Any notion of “social experiment” was surface-level and carried out, from the over-the-top pink clothes and Chihuahuas, to the mountains of (in all probability empty) suitcases Hilton and Richie introduced with them. The blonde duo would chase one another with animal feces and even auditioned males up to now a younger Kesha’s mom. Armed with Barbie-girl appears, a child voice, and a catchphrase (“That’s sizzling”), Hilton created a character for herself: the airhead heiress.
The Easy Life was half actuality, half sitcom. Hilton was the lead, and her identify was within the theme music—“Miss Hilton, you have to be value a trillion bucks!” the lyrics sang. She performed the position to perfection, and her ditzy persona transcended the present to turn out to be her model: Paparazzi would {photograph} her driving round in a pink automotive, strutting out of nightclubs in oversize sun shades, and buying together with her canine in her purse (like Elle Woods, with out the Harvard diploma). “The entire world assumed that’s who I actually was,” Hilton stated earlier this 12 months. There was a fascination together with her mannequin appears and wealth, however a part of the attract was additionally figuring out what, if something, was actual about her. That is what professor June Deery, creator of the 2015 guide Actuality TV, calls “staged actuality”: the strain between the true and the staged. Deery thinks that is on the core of why audiences are so enthralled by the truth medium.
Notably for the primary two of its 5 seasons, the innocence of The Easy Life was a part of what made it enjoyable. As Hilton and Richie acquired extra well-known, the present misplaced its footing, storylining a feud between the pair within the later seasons. The 2 girls filmed individually earlier than reconciling in a hilariously staged scene during which Hilton gifted Richie a pair of sun shades. In a way, this represented actuality TV as a complete: It was turning into extra conflict-centered and contrived.
The general public reevaluations of the 2000s usually make us wince at present. (The shameful hounding of Britney Spears is the clearest instance.) However probably the most brutal years of the truth TV medium truly got here after The Easy Life. A lot of the truth programming that outlined the post-Hilton period—like MTV’s Teen Mother and weird courting exhibits like Taste of Love and Enjoying It Straight—was clearly exploitative. I grew up within the U.Okay., the place the TV schedule featured exhibits with names like Fats Households and You Are What You Eat. On the latter, contestants could be proven a large desk full of all of the meals they’d eaten in per week. After that they had been berated for that, one among their poops could be proven on nationwide tv. (Google it in case you don’t consider me!) The fifth season of the U.Okay.’s Massive Brother, in 2004, professed to be purposefully “evil.” It was a far cry from the earlier seasons, which targeted on “again to fundamentals” residing, the contestants even holding a coop of chickens. As an alternative, the present launched twists to impress (usually drunken) arguments. (Police investigated after one incident, dubbed “struggle evening,” spun uncontrolled.)
It looks like there’s a nostalgia for the earliest years of actuality TV, earlier than battle and animosity grew to become so central. This 12 months, Bravo aired Luann and Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake—a Actual Housewives spin-off that includes the New York Metropolis collection’ Luann de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan as they tried to breathe new life into Benton, a city in rural Illinois. The Easy Life impressed a complete subgenre of (barely sadistic) exhibits about taking celebrities out of their environment. However Crappie Lake felt so comparable in format and tone to The Easy Life that, based on creator Jeff Jenkins, it was initially pitched to Hilton’s mom, Kathy, who turned it down as a result of she didn’t wish to “encroach on her daughter’s terrain.” Within the U.Okay., Survivor and Massive Brother had been each rebooted in 2023, the latter firmly reestablished as a social experiment slightly than a tabloid-focused controversy machine.
A few of actuality TV’s different large exhibits returned to their origins this 12 months, as properly. After a wild interval of FBI arrests and embezzlement scandals, the Housewives franchise has rediscovered its candy spot: rich girls arguing about petty, low-stakes stuff. The reboot of the The Actual Housewives of New York Metropolis—which was completely recast to raised replicate New York’s elite at present—featured arguments about cheese plates, restaurant reservations, and celebration etiquette. Elsewhere, The Nice British Baking Present additionally declared it was going “again to fundamentals,” after followers complained it was turning into too imply and sophisticated.
A part of this is likely to be a want for extra lighthearted escapism, after nationwide reckonings on race and politics made their method onto actuality exhibits following the Black Lives Matter protests of summer season 2020. It may also be a response to issues concerning the welfare of actuality stars themselves—it’s exhausting to be entertained by exhibits that really feel overly darkish and exploitative. Or it might be fatigue over enormous newsworthy scandals—just like the conviction of Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis star Jen Shah, who was sentenced in January to 6 and a half years in jail for working a nationwide telemarketing rip-off. Regardless of the cause, actuality TV is channeling a time when being a viewer was easier.
After The Easy Life ended, Hilton’s star started to fade within the early 2010s, as rankings for her solo actuality tasks faltered. (There are solely so many occasions you’ll be able to watch somebody search for a “new BFF.”) However we’re presently residing by way of a Hiltonaissance. It began with This Is Paris—a 2020 documentary that targeted on her upbringing and rise to fame. Within the movie, Hilton revealed her experiences with emotional, verbal, and bodily abuse whereas attending boarding faculties as an adolescent. The airhead heiress we first met was nowhere to be seen. She was providing one thing new.
Hilton’s rebrand suggests an consciousness that her “That’s sizzling” persona in all probability wouldn’t work now. Viewers are extra savvy, and social media has given us what looks like a extra intimate reference to celebrities. (Plus, it’s far more aspirational to be a savvy #boss than an airhead.) On this period, the important thing to success on actuality TV is sharing as many new issues as potential, so Hilton’s TV character now feels extra complicated, and fewer distant—whether or not or not that’s truly the case. Most not too long ago, followers watched the run-up to her marriage ceremony on Peacock actuality present Paris in Love. The second season, which is presently airing, extra intently resembles a Kardashians-style present, during which Hilton—not talking within the child voice that made her well-known—shares how she juggles her enterprise empire, motherhood, marriage, and fame.
It was as soon as enthralling to look at Hilton, who by no means appeared absolutely actual, doing one thing as regular as baking a messy pasta dish. In 2021, she shared the recipe for her “well-known” lasagna on Cooking With Paris—a slick Netflix collection the place superstar besties like Kim Kardashian and Demi Lovato joined her within the kitchen. The tip product was extra polished than The Easy Life, however nowhere close to as enjoyable. (The present was canceled after one season, and apparently, her lasagna tastes “like a shoe.”)
Twenty years on from The Easy Life, actuality TV is eager for an easier time. However I’m not satisfied the medium can recapture its innocence past surface-level nostalgia. An excessive amount of has modified. Ultimately, the Kardashians would supersede Hilton. Led by the socialite’s former assistant and bestie Kim, the household took “talentless” actuality TV fame to a complete new stage, transcending the medium to create the modern-day influencer. Now, we hardly ever hear the phrase “well-known for being well-known” anymore, as a result of it’s so widespread in our tradition. I’m wondering if what we’re actually nostalgic for is the time when this was an exception, slightly than a cultural norm. Once we may salivate over the outdated lasagna with out realizing precisely the way it was made, or that it didn’t style pretty much as good because it seemed.
