That’s just not hot anymore. Paris Hilton opened up in a new interview about her former career as a reality star and how she hopes to distance herself from the image she created during the early 2000s.
Speaking with Harper’s Bazaar for a profile published on Tuesday, December 13, Hilton, 35 — who shot to mainstream stardom when The Simple Life premiered in 2003 — told the magazine that she hopes the public will soon focus solely on her entrepreneurial endeavors.
“I want to be known as a businesswoman,” the perfume mogul — who just released her 20th fragrance, Gold Rush — said. “I don’t want to be known as a reality TV star. I don’t like the way that sounds.”
After the Simple Life, which costarred Hilton’s then-BFF Nicole Richie, ended its five-season run in 2007, the hotel heiress went on to appear in two other successful reality series. She starred on MTV’s Paris Hilton’s My New BFF, which ran for two seasons in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009, and launched international editions of the show in the U.K. and Dubai in 2009. Hilton’s eight-part Oxygen docuseries, The World According to Paris, premiered in 2011.
Though the shows undoubtedly helped Hilton build her brand, she is ready to let go of the self-described “spoiled, materialistic, bratty” persona she crafted for the cameras.
“I have really grown past that,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “Now I mostly focus on my empire and my brand, rather than everything else that comes with the reality star kind of life.… I spend my time working rather than just enjoying myself and being on vacation.”
During her chat with the publication, the “Stars Are Blind” singer also revealed that she believes she paved the way for celebrities who are now paid to party or make appearances.
“When I moved to New York as a teenager I would just party all the time, but now people think I am actually smart because I have parlayed that into a very lucrative business,” the jet-setting DJ, who has residencies at nightclubs all over the globe, explained. “With partying, no one had ever been paid to go to a party. I was the first one to kind of invent that in Las Vegas at 20 years old. Back in the day, a DJ would maybe get $200 and they would be hidden in a DJ booth. Now they are headliners, making millions of dollars — the whole attraction is them. I saw that coming before it was actually happening.”
With business on the forefront of her mind, Hilton told Harper’s Bazaar that finding a soulmate is not her top priority at this stage in her life.
“I love being single,” the blonde beauty, who split from her businessman beau Thomas Gross in April 2016 after a year of dating, said. “Before, I could never be alone. I always needed a boyfriend. Now, I feel so independent and I am so happy with myself. I don’t need anyone to validate my happiness.”
