Paris Hilton says Walmart question was just her 'pretending'

The Simple Life stars Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie recently reunited for the 20 year anniversary of their iconic reality TV for the Peacock series Paris & Nicole: The Encore. Now, the hotel heiress is bringing all the nostalgia by pulling back the curtain on one of the most iconic moments from the original Simple Life series.

Paris Hilton says she was just 'pretending' not to know what Walmart is

In the first season of The Simple Life, Paris Hilton and her BFF Nicole Richie were sent to a small town in Arkansas, the state that just happens to be the home to Walmart's headquarters, where one of the residents told the pair that people in their small town will hang out in Walmart.

Since the pair were there to be a couple of rich, famous fish out of water, it came as no real surprise to the viewers that Paris Hilton asked what Walmart is. She followed up by taking a guess and asked, "Is it, like, they sell wall stuff?"

For the past two decades, this has been an iconic moment in pop culture and reality TV history, but Paris Hilton says she was just "pretending" to have no idea what the chain store is and that it was part of the character she was putting on.

She told PEOPLE, "We wanted it to be entertaining. We come from Hollywood. We were basically just playing into what we knew that the audience would want."

According to Paris Hilton, a lot of the sillier moments from the series were exactly that: Paris and Nicole trying to play up what people expected a pair of wealthy celebrities who were put in the shoes of normal people to be like in order to make an entertaining show and get people talking about them.

Anyone who watched the show will agree with one thing: it worked.

Paris Hilton said that other iconic moments from the series like making a grilled cheese with an iron instead of a frying pan and mopping the floors while on a Segway were moments that she looks back on as being "hilarious and so much fun."

Paris Hilton's "troubled teen industry" bill passes

In the years since the first season of The Simple Life aired, Paris Hilton has been seriously busy. She's done everything from release music to have her own cooking show and even produced a line of kitchen tools -- sold at Walmart, of course. But one of the most important things she's done has been bringing awareness to the troubled teen industry, also known as the TTI.

In 2020, her documentary This Is Paris was released exclusively on YouTube and featured her sharing her story about being taken against her will to a series of different TTI boarding schools where she says she was one of tens of thousands of teens that are verbally and physically abused in the programs with thousands of them having tragically passed due to the mistreatment they suffer.

Following the release of her 2020 documentary, Paris Hilton has shifted from just being a reality TV star and pop culture icon to being an activist bringing awareness to the TTI and working hard with government officials to try and stop any future children from suffering at the hands of the camps and schools like the ones she was sent to.

After being passed by the U.S. Congress, the bill was sent to Joe Biden who put the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act into law on December 24. The bill aims to add regulation to the TTI in order to make the schools and camps safer for the teens sent to them, bring more oversight to the practices taking place at the locations, and train the staff to better understand the behavioral and mental health issues their attendees may be struggling with in order to better help them in an appropriate and effective way.

The bill being signed into law is a huge deal not just for Paris Hilton, but for everyone who was, like her, sent to one of the boarding schools or camps as part of the TTI and was abused as part of the industry.