Paris & Nicole: Encore (TV Program)

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    Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie Give a Surprising Education in Opera

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    “Paris & Nicole: The Encore,” a sequel to “The Simple Life,” is a comedic lark about creating an opera, with enlightening lessons along the way.It was a sight I certainly didn’t expect to see this year, or ever: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie sitting down with Thomas Adès, one of the greatest living composers, to learn about opera.Adès is a longtime fan and admirer of them, he tells the camera in “Paris & Nicole: The Encore,” a sequel to “The Simple Life” now streaming on Peacock. The women come to him with a tune, which he echoes at the piano. Can he, they wonder, just write their opera?He tells them, with evasive politeness, that he’s not sure he’s the right person for the job. Before leaving, they ask him how long it takes to write an opera. One to five years, he says.They have less than a month.It’s an enlightening moment, one of many it turns out, in “Paris & Nicole,” a three-episode lark about Hilton and Richie reuniting to write an opera based on their decades of friendship. This art form, they learn with jaws dropped, isn’t easy. In fact, as the series shows in a surprisingly effective opera education, it’s unbelievably hard.Still, they are determined. Hilton and Richie, visibly mature and mostly shaking their Y2K-era ditsy personas, set out to compose an entire opera using just one word: sanasa.As fans of “The Simple Life” may remember, Hilton and Richie have often sung “sanasa, sanasa” at each other, to the tune of Elvis’s entrance music. You could generously describe it as having the nonsense of Dada yet the communicative power of a wordless Meredith Monk vocalise. They have seen the song as a vibe check, or an exclamation of joy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie Revisit ‘The Simple Life’

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      The celebutantes-turned-businesswomen are rebooting the show that provided a blueprint for the past 20 years of reality TV.How would two troubled Los Angeles heiresses manage as members of the Bible Belt working class?The answer helped revolutionize reality TV and legitimized the careers of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. In 2003, the pair of 22-year-olds debuted in Fox’s “The Simple Life,” which documented their move to Altus, Ark., to live with a family on their farm and try out blue collar jobs.Hilton and Richie brought rich-girl haughtiness and high jinks to mundane tasks like cleaning hotel rooms and, in one memorable episode, serving burgers at a Sonic Drive-In. The result was a quotable megahit — with heart. “Their fish-out-of-water ineptitude serves as a social leveler that gives them their comeuppance and preserves the dignity of their rural hosts,” Alessandra Stanley wrote in a review for The New York Times. Unlike the other popular reality programs of the time, like “Big Brother” and “Survivor,” the allure of “The Simple Life” didn’t come from a wild premise or shocking competition: The personalities of and friendship between Hilton and Richie were the drawing card. That recipe has been built upon in subsequent reality franchises like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives.”More than two decades later, the two are appearing in “Paris & Nicole: Encore,” a three-part reboot which is primarily set in L.A. and involves activities and outings a bit closer to home. It will air on Peacock beginning Thursday. Though the show centers on the pair’s staging of an opera based on “sanasa,” a made-up word which fans might remember as a mainstay joke on the original, Hilton and Richie also revisit Altus, Sonic and the friendship that made their show riveting TV.“There was nothing really to compare it to,” Hilton said of “The Simple Life.” “So we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.”Jerod Harris/Getty Images for VultureAhead of the “Encore” premiere, we talked to Hilton and Richie about how reality TV has changed since “The Simple Life,” the impact of social media on the genre and the shows they’re enjoying now.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.You were some of the first reality TV stars, and now it is an oversaturated industry. How do you think the landscape has changed since “The Simple Life” first aired?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More