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Paris Hilton’s career takes a bizarre turn – into the kitchen

Paris Hilton, together with pooch Diamond Baby, teach us how to make the heiress' signature lasagne, in a new YouTube cooking show.

Paris Hilton, together with pooch Diamond Baby, teach us how to make the heiress' signature lasagne, in a new YouTube cooking show. Photo: YouTube

Paris Hilton, the once omnipresent ‘It’ girl who has primarily laid dormant for the past few years, has slipped back into the spotlight with a new home-made video, albeit a much tamer offering than her 2004 hit One Night in Paris.

Cooking with Paris, her 17-minute YouTube cooking show has racked up 2,913,935 views. The hotel heiress, who in 2007 was named the Most Overrated Celebrity by the Guinness Book of World Records, reveals at the start of her 17-minute webisode that she’s “an amazing cook”.

Spoiler alert: she’s not. What follows is a slow-motion car crash of watching Paris half-heartedly and haphazardly pull together her “infamous” (her words) lasagne.

There’s a lot to unpack. Accompanied by her tiny black chihuahua Diamond Baby, who the hotel heiress tells us is “killing it” in a custom Chanel apron, Paris is immediately put-off by having to cook on her cooking show.

It’s “annoying” that she has to “steam” – she means boils – the pasta sheets, wishing they were the type that were “already done”.

Another big no-no for Paris? Not having shredded cheese and needing to grate it herself.

“This is so brutal,” she says, but decides “whatever, I’ll live,” helped by the fact that she’s wearing what she calls her “chef’s gloves” but what anyone else would call fingerless weight-lifting gloves – and a health hazard.

Clomping around in high heels and a rainbow jumper with her waist-length blonde hair swishing behind her, the 38-year-old rattles through drawers in an unfamiliar kitchen in search for the right utensils.

“All these spoons are brutal. I don’t know what this is,” she says, holding up a spatula.

“But it will work.”

There are some production values and a few edits, but it seems like a no-rehearsal, one-take situation. Paris tosses her garbage into the sink as she goes, uses a potato masher to cook the mince in a too-small pan, pops open jars for the sauce and twice employs her “towel trick” which involves using a paper towel to mop up her mistakes.

When she realises too late that she forgot to add onions and garlic, she doesn’t sweat it: “I feel my lasagne should not have onion or garlic in it.”

She does, however, feel it should have 11 grinds of pepper and seven grinds of Himalayan pink salt.

Paris with BFF and Simple Life co-star Nicole Ritchie, way back in 2004. Photo: Getty

“Lasagne is, like, very hard to make. Actually, I don’t think it is, but people think it is,” she shares. “I guess it is a lot of steps compared to, lik,e making toast or something.”

What she eventually pulls out of the oven looks edible, delicious even, but what exactly is being cooked up here? The video is entertaining but falls short of self-parody. The punchline, if there even is one, is super subtle.

And yet there’s also no big reveal that aside from being an heiress, DJ and perfume pusher, Paris Hilton is an undercover foodie. She comes across as pampered, clueless and ultimately harmless. It’s just like watching Paris Hilton cooking a lasagne. No more, no less.

But could there be a tasty twist? Less than a week after her kitchen adventures, the former Simple Life star hit up a TV Critics Association press tour event to promote This is Paris, her new YouTube documentary series due in May.

“In this film, I really show who I truly am,” she said. “I’ve been judged based on a character that I created in the beginning of my career. And now I feel like it’s finally time that people see who the real Paris is.”

So, wait, is “lasagne Paris,” the “real Paris?” Or is the cooking show a timely reminder of her “character” so she can then pull the rug out with her realness?

Whatever the case, she’s racked up 298K-and-counting YouTube subscribers  keen to see what she’ll serve up next.

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