In an excerpt from Paris Hilton’s forthcoming memoir, the heiress says then-boyfriend Rick Salomon pressured her into making a sex tape. The short clip began circulating online when Hilton was just 19 years old and Salomon was 31. “I don’t remember that much about the night he wanted to make a videotape while we made love,†she writes in Paris: The Memoir, according to an excerpt published in the Sunday Times. “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.’†Eventually, she gave in to Salomon’s pressure after being assured that “no one else would ever see it,†despite feeling as though she wasn’t “capable of the level of trust required to make a videotape like that.†To ease her nerves she “had to drink myself silly,†the “Stars Are Blind†singer admits. “Quaaludes helped.â€
After the 37-second tape leaked in 2004, Hilton begged Salomon to not release the full version. He responded by saying he “had every right to sell something that belonged to him — something that had a lot of financial value,†she writes. “If this was something I had chosen to do, I would have owned it … I would have stood by it, capitalized on it, licensed the shit out of every frame, and then boogied on over to the bank without apologizing to anyone.†Hilton’s highly successful reality show The Simple Life, co-starring her famous friend Nicole Richie, premiered soon thereafter. “I was playing a character for The Simple Life, which, again, I think was a trauma response,†she told Harper’s Bazaar Arabia on March 6. “And then [I had] to continue that character season after season. In every interview, people assumed that’s just who I was in real life … Plus there was no social media, so my story was just told by the media and people trying to sell stories, make money off of me, and make up lies.â€