'Shame, loss and stark terror swept over me.' The story behind Paris Hilton's sex tape.

When Paris Hilton was first asked by her then-boyfriend in the early 2000s whether she would make a sex tape with him, she felt deeply "uncomfortable".

Hilton, who was just 19 at the time, said he was her first proper boyfriend and she was struggling to navigate it all. Were sex tapes common in relationships? Was she just inexperienced, given he was 13 years older than her?

"He had often said it was something he did with other women, but I felt weird and uncomfortable about it. I always told him, 'I can't. It's too embarrassing'," Hilton wrote in her upcoming book Paris: The Memoir.

"He told me if I wouldn't do it, he could easily find someone who would, and that was the worst thing I could think of - to be dumped by this grown man because I was a stupid kid who didn't know how to play grown-up games."

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Her then-boyfriend was famed US poker player Rick Salomon. 

Despite Salomon not being "capable of the level of trust required to make a videotape like that," Hilton said she was pressured into making a sex tape with him.

Only a few years later was it released for the world to see, without her consent - and Hilton was left to deal with the fallout on her own.

"I was told no one else would ever see it," she said in her book, as per a new extract released in The Sunday Times. 

On the night they filmed the tape, Hilton said she drank herself "silly" and took Quaaludes as well. 

"I don't remember that much about the night he wanted to make a videotape while we made love. But I did it. I have to own that. I knew what he wanted, and I went with it. The truth is, I wanted to be alive in a sensual way. I wanted to feel like a woman who's comfortable in her own skin."

When the couple split three years later, Salomon sold the tape and it was distributed under the name 'One Night in Paris'. 

At the time, Hilton's star was rising - a budding reality TV star and 'socialite' thanks to the launch of her iconic show The Simple Life. So for the sex tape to go viral online and be scrutinised so heavily by the media was horrible for Hilton.

As she wrote: "I felt like my life was over, and in many ways it was. Certainly, the career I had envisioned was no longer possible. Everything I wanted my brand to be, the trust and respect I was trying to rebuild with my parents, the sliver of self-worth I’d been able to recover - all that was instantly in ruins."

Despite pleading with Salomon to remove the tape from distribution, he told her that he "had every right to sell something that belonged to him - something that had a lot of financial value".

"More value than my privacy, obviously. My dignity. My future. Shame, loss and stark terror swept over me," she wrote.

In the Netflix documentary The American Meme, Hilton wiped back tears as she spoke about it.

"Literally overnight my entire life changed. It was all over every news station, every single talk show host, everyone was making fun of it."

Image: Netflix.

"I didn't leave my house for, like months. I was so embarrassed. I felt like everyone on the street was laughing at me. I literally could not walk on the street because I felt like every single person had watched it, had seen me naked and was talking behind my back."

She then added, "It was like being raped. It felt like I've lost part of my soul and been talked about in such cruel and mean ways."

In her new memoir, Hilton said it affected her parents as well, saying her mum Kathy Hilton was "crumpled" in the bed next to her daughter who was struggling mentally. And her dad, Rick Hilton, was "red-faced and furious, worked the phones, calling lawyers, calling spin doctors, trying to help me marshal any hope of damage control".

She also said her brothers didn't cope with it either, "plenty old enough to understand what it all meant, and they were so weirded out they could hardly look at me".

In a recent interview with The Allbright she admitted "the tape is something that I will regret for the rest of my life"

"I was a teenager; I was in love. I trusted the wrong person. And I let that happen."

In the end, Salomon actually sued Hilton for defamation after she expressed her disapproval at the tape being leaked.

She later counter-sued Salomon over the tape's release - which was released and distributed without her consent - and they settled out of court in 2005, with Hilton being reportedly awarded as much as US$400,000.

As Hilton said to Vanity Fair in 2021, that sex tape and the painful memories associated with it is "something that will hurt me for the rest of my life".

"It's always there in the back of my mind. When it happened, people were so mean about it to me. The way that I was spoken about on nightly talk shows and the media, to see things with my family, was just heartbreaking."

If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service.

Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia. 

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