'This Is Paris' premiered in 2020.
Kathy Hilton is getting candid about her emotions after watching Paris Hilton’s YouTube documentary, This Is Paris.
During an appearance on Andy Cohen's SiriusXM radio show, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star shared her experience watching the doc with her daughter after initially avoiding it.
In the documentary, which was released in 2020, Paris openly speaks about the alleged physical and emotional abuse she suffered from teachers during an 11-month stay at the Provo Canyon School in Utah, where her parents sent her as a teen to reform her behavior, from the mid to late '90s. In a previous statement to multiple outlets, a representative for the Provo Canyon School said, "Originally opened in 1971, Provo Canyon School was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000. We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to this time."
Paris also speaks about the trauma that came with the aftermath of the release of her 2004 sex tape with then-boyfriend Rick Solomon. The traumatic events from Paris' life is what kept Kathy from initially watching the documentary.
“We held hands for an hour watching this thing. And just the energy that I was feeling from her and how relieved and happy that she was, that I would watch it,” Kathy told Cohen about finally viewing the doc for the first time after returning from a trip with her 40-year-old daughter.
“But it put me into such a depression. A lot of people understood that we were trying to help our daughter. You know, we were trying to save Paris, how ironic," she added of the choice to enroll her daughter at Provo Canyon School. "We were worried. She was living in New York. She was sneaking out and sometimes didn't come back home for three days. Not going to school. And so, we'd put her in this boarding school. I thought, ‘Gotta keep her away from the city,’ and all these predators and people that want her to model. And she escaped everywhere.”
For Kathy, the fact that only a brief part of her daughter’s trauma and struggle was depicted in This Is Paris made things much more heartbreaking.
“I mean, you only saw 20 minutes basically of that entire chunk of her life,” she recalled. “Everything else was business. [My husband] Rick and I, I was ready for the booby hatch. I'm literally saying to myself, ‘What do we do? Move to Mars?’ I was so helpless. And we finally had to send her, and we'd gone and visited. And we had met with school placement people.”
Kathy continued, “It was handled extremely professionally. In fact, I found out after this came out, there's people that you [Andy] and I both know, that have had these problems or sent their child to the school. And then finally they talked about it. You know, you feel kind of ashamed.”
ET spoke with Paris in September, and she said her family was planning to watch the documentary together.
"It's definitely going to be very hard to watch and very emotional," Paris said at the time. "I don't think any parent is ready to watch something like this. But I think it will only bring us closer, and I can just get that off my chest and move on."
RELATED CONTENT:
