Advertisement

Paris Hilton felt pressured into making sex tape at 19: 'I felt like my life was over'

Roll the tape: Paris Hilton is sounding off on the infamous sex tape that helped launch her to fame in the early 2000s.

In an excerpt of her upcoming book "Paris: The Memoir," (out now),published by the Sunday Times on Saturday, the reality-TV star turned media mogul gets candid about the sex tape she made with boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2000. Hilton doesn’t name Salomon in her account, only referring to him by his nickname "Scum."

USA TODAY can confirm the accuracy of the Sunday Times' excerpt.

"I don’t remember that much about the night he wanted to make a videotape while we made love," Hilton writes, according to the Sunday Times, revealing that she drank alcohol and took Quaaludes prior to the making of the tape. "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.’"

"Paris: The Memoir" at Bookshop from $27.90

Paris Hilton reveals son's name, why she and Carter Reum kept it a secret from family

In an excerpt of her upcoming book “Paris: The Memoir,” Paris Hilton gets candid about the sex tape she made with boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2000.
In an excerpt of her upcoming book “Paris: The Memoir,” Paris Hilton gets candid about the sex tape she made with boyfriend Rick Salomon in 2000.

Paris Hilton thought she was asexual. What we often misunderstand about asexuality.

Despite not being "capable of the level of trust required to make a videotape like that," Hilton says she was pressured into making the tape and was assured that "no one else would ever see it."

"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," Hilton writes. "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."

But the tape would come back to haunt Hilton a few years later when a 37-second clip of the video began circulating online.

Hilton, a then-budding TV star with the imminent launch of her show "The Simple Life," begged Scum not to release the full version of the tape. Her ex-boyfriend told her that he "had every right to sell something that belonged to him – something that had a lot of financial value."

"I felt like my life was over, and in many ways it was. Certainly, the career I had envisioned was no longer possible," Hilton writes. "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."

Paris Hilton, husband Carter Reum make first red carpet appearances since becoming parents

'Loved beyond words': Paris Hilton welcomes first child, a boy, with husband Carter Reum

Worse than the intense media glare that followed the sex tape's release was the emotional toll the controversy took on her family.

"My mom just crumpled into bed and stayed there. My dad, red-faced and furious, worked the phones, calling lawyers, calling spin doctors, trying to help me marshal any hope of damage control," Hilton writes. "(Hilton’s brothers) Barron and Conrad were plenty old enough to understand what it all meant, and they were so weirded out they could hardly look at me."

Hilton, who was 19 at the time of the tape's creation, asserts that she would never "under any circumstances be involved in the production of an amateur teen porn video."

"If this was something I had chosen to do, I would have owned it," Hilton writes. "I would have stood tall in my Louboutins and said, ‘Yup, that was my choice.’ … I would have stood by it, capitalized on it, licensed the (expletive) out of every frame, and then boogied on over to the bank without apologizing to anyone."

"Paris: The Memoir" at Bookshop from $27.90

Purchases you make through our links may earn us and our publishing partners a commission.

'Welcome back queen': Paris Hilton thrills fans with re-release of 'Stars Are Blind (Paris' Version)'

Who has the No. 1 celebrity memoir of the past decade?  The answer might surprise you

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paris Hilton says ex pressured her into creating sex tape in memoir