Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s Parents ‘Told Us Not to’ Make The Simple Life Originally

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s fame truly shot to the stratosphere after The Simple Life, but if their powerful parents had their way, the show wouldn’t have existed at all.

As the it-girl duo gear up for their long-awaited return in Paris & Nicole: Encore, they’ve been reflecting on the original 2003 show, which saw them travel around the country to experience how the other side lives.

In an interview with Glamour, Hilton and Richie, both 43, revealed their parents were far from on board when the idea for the show was first floated.

“Our parents did not want us to do it and told us not to,” Hilton said.

“It was the first of its kind. They hear that we’re going to be sent somewhere and we don’t know where we’re going,” Hilton recalled of the initial idea for the show.

Once it got underway, though, her parents, Rick and Nicky Hilton, changed their tune.

“But after the first episode aired, my mom called me and she’s like, ‘This is the most hilarious show I’ve ever seen in my life. You and Nicole are incredible,'” Hilton said. “She’s like, ‘I was wrong for once.'”

Now that she and Richie are revisiting the iconic show in a whole new way — the Peacock three-part reunion sees them try to turn their iconic song “Sanasa” into an opera.

The idea came about as an ode to how “innovative” The Simple Life was when it first premiered, Hilton said, as they knew that “us being in the opera world” would be hilarious.

“We just wanted to do something different than all the other reunions,” she told the outlet. “It’s such a special show to celebrate, and we just wanted to do it in the most extra and extravagant way. And it’s funny because we’re going to be fish out of water in this as well.”

After the reunion was teased in the spring, Lionel Richie hilariously commented on his daughter and Paris’ latest joint venture, as he told Entertainment Tonight, “Let me tell you something: those two scare me just standing next to each other.”

He also admitted that his daughter and her BFF are “older but they haven’t changed” as he placed some of the blame on himself for their iconic antics.

“I don’t know if the world knows this, [but] they started this mess and I was the first guinea pig daddy to go along with this,” he recalled.

“When they first started doing things like driving down the freeway backwards and I kept saying, ‘What are you guys doing?’ [She’d say] ‘It’s reality television, Dad!’ And now these two are back together, oh my god, world, hang on to your seat.”

All three episodes of Paris & Nicole: The Encore premiere Thursday, Dec. 12 on Peacock.