Paris Hilton really, really wanted a daughter. She wanted a daughter so badly that five weeks before her son, Phoenix, was born via surrogate this past January, Hilton and her husband, venture capitalist Carter Reum, were already trying for another surrogate pregnancy: undergoing a fresh round of in vitro fertilization, injecting Hilton’s belly with hormones and, through her whimpers of pain, pleading for a girl. On the morning of Hilton’s egg retrieval, she dressed to manifest the sex of her next baby: hot pink terry cloth tracksuit, blush pink bucket hat, and a Barbie-pink quilted Chanel purse.
About a year later, when I meet her at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, in the middle of a 24-hour press blitz for the second season of her Peacock reality show, Paris in Love, Hilton is beaming. Days earlier, only 10 months after welcoming Phoenix, she finally got her girl, London Marilyn Hilton Reum. Like her mother, London is named for an iconic European metropolis; Marilyn is an homage to Hilton’s late paternal grandmother. Hilton’s house is already festooned with pink Christmas trees, and she is “over the moon.”
“I always imagined my mini-me, putting her in little dresses and all the mommy-and-me things we could do together,” says Hilton, drinking a venti chai with coconut milk through an on-brand pink straw. “Just having my little best friend.” She’s wearing a red Rebecca Vallance cocktail dress bedazzled with crystal bows, nude fishnets, and silver heels. Her face is still glazed with TV-ready bronzer, after a morning filming back-to-back segments with Hoda & Jenna, Kelly & Mark, and Kelly Clarkson. “I miss her so much,” she says of London, who is home in L.A. Along with Reum, Hilton’s entourage fills a conference room: publicists, photographers, videographers. Her whole life is content, as Hilton probably knows better than anyone. She speaks, at first, in her patented baby-soft voice, which in person is as soothing as ASMR. “I’m in my Mom Era,” Hilton says. “This is my best era yet.”
To go from zero to two babies in the same calendar year would boggle most parental minds, but Hilton projects total serenity. The former host of Ibiza’s Foam & Diamonds party has been blessed with quiet nights. “They are such good babies. They’re on an amazing sleep schedule, eating schedule, so they don’t cry. They’re so happy,” Hilton says. She is transparent about child care, featuring her hard-working “baby nanny” on the new season of Paris in Love (now streaming). “I feel so lucky because all my other friends who have kids are like, ‘I’m up all night. They’re crying all night.’ My babies, they’re just so calm, so chill.”
For all the versions of Paris that have played out in her two decades of fame — party girl, The Simple Life starlet, tabloid punching bag, and now entrepreneur and New York Times-bestselling author of Paris: The Memoir — Hilton, 42, has longed for motherhood for some time. She’s had baby clothes in storage for years. Before reconnecting with Reum (whom she’s known since her 20s) four Thanksgivings ago at his sister’s house, she froze her eggs and was considering single motherhood. Burned by past relationships and engagements, Hilton remembers thinking, “I’d rather just have my own children by myself.”
Before Reum, “I was always searching,” Hilton tells me. “Even if I was in a relationship, I was always looking for something else.” Now, with a loving and supportive partner, plus their two babies, Hilton says she has found a sense of peace — her own version of the simple life.
“I feel like my life is finally complete,” she says. “We’re the cutesy crew.” That alliterative catchphrase dates back to her 2021 wedding at the former Bel-Air estate of her grandfather, Conrad Hilton, where Reum vowed, “I can’t wait for forever with our cutesy crew.” Phoenix and London join the crew’s teacup canine members, including Ether, Crypto, Prince Tokyo Gizmo Hilton, and Slivington — a riff on “sliving,” Hilton’s go-to portmanteau of “slaying” and “living.”
Hilton “is such a doting mother,” says her younger sister, Nicholai “Nicky” Rothschild, a mom of three herself. “I always joke: If her dogs are any indication about what kind of mother she’ll be, it’s going to be pretty fabulous.”
Although the timing of Hilton’s growing family may seem like a chaotic coincidence, she is grateful it happened as it did. “We wanted them to be close in age so they could grow up together,” she says. And she’s glad Phoenix arrived first. (Hilton has no particular emotional attachment to the city of Phoenix, Arizona, but she liked the idea of referencing River Phoenix and the symbolism of a “magical, rising phoenix.”)
“He’s going to be the protective big brother,” she predicts, sharing that Phoenix is already gently petting London’s head. The high chirp of Hilton’s voice falls ever so slightly as she shifts the conversation from bubbly “It’s a girl!” chat to the difficult and traumatic past she has begun to share with the world. “I wish I had a big brother growing up,” Hilton says. “So many bad things that happened wouldn’t have happened if I had a big brother at school to watch and protect me.”
Full interview: romper.com
