When Reality TV Was Honest About Being Exploitative: Paris, Nicole and 'The Simple Life'

No matter what happens in the world, I take comfort in knowing that The Simple Life exists. It harkens back to an age in reality television that could not be made today for reasons of problematic treatment and/or life-ruining potential for the participants, with shows like Wife Swap and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition—the stuff I’d stay up late to watch with my dad when my mom was away. Life was, dare I say, simpler then: when unsuspecting folks were exploited for sport, and everyone involved knew it was exploitation. Now we have the Lacheys of Netflix for that, but they’re pretending that they’re helping people. It hits different, you know?

The Simple Life was peak exploitation reality because it didn’t exploit the underdogs. Then 20-year-old Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie threw themselves into the fire of blue-collar labor and came out looking ridiculous, all in the name of entertainment. For two months, they lived with a real family in Arkansas, worked real jobs like dairy farming and fast food serving, and just generally wreaked havoc across the heartland, giving regular Joes everywhere permission to laugh at their misery before hoisting themselves up by their bootstraps for another hard day’s work. When the rich people look stupid, everyone wins.

For the 20th anniversary of the show, now 40-year-old Paris and Nicole reunited for Paris & Nicole: The Encore. Now they’re adults and mothers, though, and they have 20 years of work and exploitation at the hands of paparazzi and the tabloid media under their belts, so making fools of themselves in a cornfield wasn’t in the cards. If you want that, go watch Crappie Lake, with former New York Housewives Sonja Morgan and Luann de Lesseps—the Paris and Nicole of their Upper East Side socialite generation—who are always down to embarrass themselves for money. I think about Luann emerging from that murky lake, hoisting a catfish over her head triumphantly, frankly, far too often.

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No, Paris and Nicole already have enough money. This time, they returned to Arkansas with their tails between their legs, hoping no one was still mad at them, even though they had very good reason to be. Like the producer who almost got arrested when Nicole hijacked a police car, or the dairy farmer who had to deal with the health department when they spilled too much milk, or the bar owners who had to replace their pool table after Nicole poured bleach all over it in a fit of drunken rage.

Of the three-episode special, only the first saw the ladies back in Arkansas. The family they lived with all those years ago did agree to meet with them and reminisce, but they didn’t want to be filmed. The mayor was very gracious for, like, five minutes and took a picture with them in front of fake street signs bearing their names. The guy Nicole made out with 20 years ago has a wife now! All is forgiven, including the pool table incident, for which Nicole volunteered to reimburse. It could have stopped there, but for some reason, it didn’t. Instead of making fools of themselves doing manual labor, they decided to make fools of themselves doing…opera.

One of the motifs of The Simple Life is a little inside joke of a song that Paris and Nicole sing to each other. “Sanasa” is a word they made up when they were kids, and the tune followed from there. “It’s like a vibe check,” Richie says.

Apparently, the song captured the hearts of fans so much that the duo decided it would be the focus of their reunion and staged an operatic, theatrical version of the story of their friendship, complete with young actors playing their younger selves, a choir, and a handful of TikTok personalities. “The Sanasapera” was a fever dream of electronic visuals and death-defying feats, like Paris and Nicole descending from the ceiling of the theater in ball gowns, and a celebration of a hard-won, heartwarming friendship.

In other words, everyone looks stupid and everyone’s having fun, so everyone wins. Also, Alan Cumming narrates the whole thing, so what do you have to lose?