Perez Hilton: ‘I’d say I’m incredibly hated. And honestly? That’s a lot to take on’

The issue,’ Perez Hilton is insisting, ‘is not Meghan, but Harry.’ The celebrity blogger lets this statement sit there a while, for dramatic effect. ‘I realise this may be difficult for you Brits to accept, but Meghan is just the scapegoat here. Because it’s not just apparent but painfully obvious to us, out here, that for the entirety of his life Prince Harry has been rebelling against and resisting The Firm – your Firm.’ Squeaking forward on his leather sofa in Beverly Hills, so that his face is cartoonishly close to our Zoom screen, Hilton draws out the word – like all his sentences, ending this one on an up-note. ‘He’s not been a fan of the way it operates from the start, because he clearly thinks it’s too archaic. So Meghan was only his out: his escape clause.’

It has taken us half an hour to get on to Megxit, by way of Lady Gaga, Madonna, Kim and Kanye, and countless other celebrities featured on the 42-year-old’s gossip site over the course of its 16-year reign. Reign, because Miami-born Hilton (real name Mario Lavandeira) is still the most famous celebrity blogger in Hollywood: an opinion divider whose trademark acerbic doodles – of penises and cocaine across paparazzi shots of Hollywood stars – would get him 10 million hits a day globally at his peak. He’s a man whose website, perezhilton.com, was celebrated by Forbes magazine as the biggest gossip site on the web for three years running. As the press release for his forthcoming autobiography, TMI: My Life in Scandal, cheerfully admits, Hilton is ‘known and hated from coast to coast’. On our shores, however, the blogger is perhaps still best known for appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, where his string of vicious spats resulted in him being branded by the Twitterati ‘the most hated man in Britain’.

Interviewing Hilton feels like bingeing on junk food. It’s early morning in LA, the father of three is slim, tanned and endorphined-up from his virtual workout class, and as we move at a frenzied pace from scandal to tasty scandal I can feel my celebrity blood sugar skyrocketing.

It’s an analogy Hilton would approve of. ‘Scandal is like McDonald’s,’ he tells me when I ask what he puts his massive following down to (he prefers to call them his ‘Fram’, ‘because my fans are more like family and friends to me’). ‘It’s cheap and it’s easily accessible to the masses, and when you’re going to McDonald’s, you know that you can get a salad, but do you want a salad? No. You want a Big Mac and French fries with an apple pie and a sundae.’

The toxic treats Hilton served up inevitably came at celebrities’ expense, and in TMI the blogger unflinchingly details the takedowns that helped him build a multimillion-dollar brand from a Coffee Bean café on Sunset Boulevard with free Wi-Fi. As the first gossip blogger to catch the internet wave in the mid 2000s, he rabidly chronicled the downfalls of American sweethearts such as Paris Hilton (whose surname he stole as part of his reinvention), Nicole Richie and Britney Spears, often using cruel nicknames (Lindsay Lohan was ‘Linsanity’; Kate Moss ‘Cokate’). He obsessed over Mischa Barton’s ‘bloated’ face, ‘cottage cheese thighs’ and ‘cankles’, and posted leaked nude photographs of Jennifer Lawrence. ‘We have an expression: “if it bleeds it leads”,’ he rationalises today. ‘The most shocking and scandalous story will always get people’s attention. People enjoy all that because it makes our lives seem normal. So even if you have dysfunction in your life, you think, “Well at least my life isn’t as crazy as that wild celebrity’s.”’

Hilton wasn’t just about bringing down careers, however. The blogger’s praise had the power to make them too, and he has been credited with kick-starting the careers of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga – whose friendship, falling out and feud is hilariously and exhaustively covered in TMI. Yet on a day-to-day level, Hilton admits to feeling like he was ‘drowning in negativity’ by the end of the noughties – a negativity that was at odds with his desire to have children (he is now a single father to Mario, seven, Mia, five, and Mayte, two, all via surrogate). Then in 2009, a triple wake-up call made him realise that he had to change his ways.

Despite or perhaps because of Hilton himself being gay, he became notorious for outing gay celebrities. He begged How I Met Your Mother actor Neil Patrick Harris to come out of the closet, and tormented former *NSync singer Lance Bass for years about his sexuality. But after a string of suicides by bullied gay teens in the US, criticism of Hilton’s website had reached its peak. Then, on two consecutive nights, the blogger was publicly confronted by celebrities. The first was the Black Eyed Peas’ lead singer, Fergie, who demanded to know at an awards ceremony in Toronto, ‘Why are you being so mean?’. The second was Will.i.am, who after having been called a ‘faggot’ by Hilton asked, ‘Why’d you disrespect me, man?’ The rapper’s manager didn’t wait to hear his answer and punched Hilton in the face.

‘I’d kept telling myself that I didn’t feel bad [for celebrities] because they were rich and knew what they were signing up for,’ he muses, ‘but the closer I got to them, the more I learnt that they were three-dimensional humans too.’ Couldn’t his mean streak simply be explained by the ‘abused turned abuser’ cycle? After all, the son of two Cuban immigrants was bullied throughout his time at school. The reliving of that time in TMI makes for painful reading: day after day Hilton – who has struggled with his weight for most of his life – was pinched, laughed at and branded ‘The Fat Kid’. He wasn’t close to either his mother or his younger sister, Barbara. Then at 15, he lost his beloved father to an aneurysm.

There was also the issue of Hilton’s sexuality, which he successfully hid from his family until his late teens, when his mother found his stash of gay porn. Her response wasn’t ‘the warmest’ he writes in TMI: ‘She wasn’t understanding; she wasn’t angry or sad. All she said was, “You’re my son and I love you, because I have to love you.”’ And although Hilton is now very close to both his sister and mother – ‘it’s been beautiful to see her really accept me for who I am, flaws and all, like a great mother should’ – he surprises me by saying that ‘given my own experience, I would still prefer it if my son were not gay. I would love him and accept him unconditionally, of course. But I know that even in this day and age, life is still harder for gay people.’

Becoming a father seems to have cemented Hilton’s decision to be more positive about others. ‘Because as much as we all slow down when we see a car crash, I do think that there is almost equal interest in the positive: a hot new couple, a new royal baby…’ And no, he goes on, the pandemic hasn’t either affected Hilton’s traffic numbers, or decreased our appetite for gossip. ‘Of course Covid hasn’t killed the celebrity. If anything it’s made them bigger! Look at all the attention celebs have been getting for breaking quarantine and going on non-essential travel. We’re still talking about that.’

But essentially he’s serving up salads to his ‘Fram’ as well as Big Macs now? ‘Well positive news does well these days! And the main thing is that I’m always authentic. But listen,’ he reasons, businesslike again, ‘I’m lucky because my likeability is not crucial to my bankability.’

I’d go so far as to say that Hilton’s dislikeability is. The blogger’s new approach to life may be far healthier on a personal level – alongside the mental toxicity, Hilton shed 80lb, thanks to a gruelling training routine – but I’m not surprised to hear him say that his initial idea to write a ‘health and wellness book on how to live a happy and healthy life’ was rejected by publishers in favour of the deliciously juicy guilty read that is TMI.

People might occasionally buy salads from McDonald’s, but it will never be the primary reason they head for those golden arches. And for the first half of our interview, I get only new, improved, positive Hilton. He has ‘nothing but nice things to say about Kim [Kardashian]’. ‘She worked it and got what she wanted. Not only did she become famous, but she managed to get on the A-list.’ Here Hilton narrows his eyes, and I hold my breath, hoping he’ll unleash some of his old venom. ‘She’s not on the A+ list, she may not even be a solid A, but she’s definitely an A-.’ Rihanna ‘is so talented and beautiful’ she could actually turn him straight. And while he doesn’t think he and Lady Gaga – who fell out after she claimed he was ‘being very negative’ about her album Born This Way in an interview – ‘will ever be friends again, I would love to have her say, “I forgive you and I hear you and I’m sorry too.” Because over time I’ve realised that we were both in the wrong.’

Then there was his unexpected defence of Meghan Markle.

So it’s a relief when, circling back to Megxit during the second half of our interview, Hilton casually offers up, ‘Oh, Meghan and Harry are not going to last. There will be a second baby and that will be soon, because she is getting up there in age, and then a year after that it’ll all be over – so they don’t have much longer.’ I’ll take Hilton’s word for it. After all, the man has witnessed more celebrity splits over the years than a Hollywood divorce lawyer. ‘Because look at the facts: Harry has chosen to physically distance himself from all of his family and friends, and his life is now all about her and their son. But eventually he will get tired and sad and lonely.’

Despite the new positive outlook, there are obviously people who are ‘just irredeemably awful’ he concedes, on a roll now. Such as? Hilton winces. It pains me to say this because she is my number one of all time and a huge source of constant inspiration in my life, but…’ He hangs his head. ‘Someone who it has become painfully obvious to me is not only awful but becoming more awful over the years… is Madonna.’ Because I knew it would be her, I burst out laughing, but Hilton looks genuinely saddened. ‘I have to acknowledge that, even though I still love her.’

…and on Hilton’s ‘awful’ list?

The US talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, who has received a barrage of complaints about racism, fear and intimidation in her show’s ‘toxic’ work environment from current and former employees over the past few months, is another ‘irredeemable’. ‘I wasn’t surprised, because hello? It’s the biggest open secret. Everyone who has ever worked in Hollywood knows somebody who has had an awful experience with Ellen, whether it’s someone who worked with her or waited on her in a restaurant. It just surprised me that it took this long to boil over.’

The key to ‘not becoming awful’, Hilton has worked out over the years, is simple: ‘You just have to not drink your own Kool-Aid. So look at J-Lo: for a while she thought she was It. She had an awful public image! But then motherhood and experiencing lows in her career gave her a new perspective on everything – and people changed their minds about her.’ He pauses. ‘I wish the same would happen to me.’

Throughout our interview there are micro-moments of despondency such as this one. Hilton may have come a long way from that Coffee Bean on Sunset, but the two things he still badly wants are ‘a massive hit TV show’ and a partner. ‘Dating is a struggle right now, because most gay men hate me with a hot passion.’ Because of him outing those celebrities way back when? ‘Because of that.’ He shrugs. ‘And because of the feuds I’ve had in the past with some divas.’ Eyes to ceiling, he does a bit of mental arithmetic. ‘I’d say that I’m still more disliked than I am liked. I’d even say that I’m incredibly hated. And honestly? That’s a lot to take on.’

Hilton’s halfway down a rabbit hole about perception and reality, when he remembers someone so awful he freezes, eyes wide. ‘Katie Hopkins,’ he announces, ‘is the most miserable person I have ever met in my entire life. She’s even worse than you would think.’ Hilton’s fights with the controversial right-wing British commentator in the Big Brother house were epic, and remembering his time on the reality TV show still makes him shudder. ‘I was truly, deeply, genuinely suffering. It wasn’t an act. My mental health was very poor in there, partly because of the lack of sleep. The big mistake I made was not taking sleeping pills, when everybody else was taking Xanax, Valium, this, that and the other. And it didn’t occur to me until about two weeks in to ask the doctor for some sleeping medication.’

With our new awareness of mental health and the number of suicides connected to reality TV totting up around the globe, can shows like Big Brother really survive? ‘Well I just did Australian I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, and they did the kind of checks that Big Brother never did.’ Although he lasted just eight days, and was grateful to be eliminated after suffering ‘extreme hunger’ in the camp, ‘I had multiple consultations before I was allowed on the show. I spoke to a therapist when I was there, and I’ve spoken to a therapist three times since leaving the show. That’s what should be being done across the board, especially on shows like Love Island where multiple people have taken their own lives.’ He shakes his head. ‘So many young people want to be famous, and they think it’s going to be rainbows and sunshine all the time. Well guess what? It’s not.’

I think the public is becoming more aware of that. Yet there must be enough rainbows and sunshine in celeb-land to keep Hilton as entranced by fame as he clearly still is; to keep him working ‘harder and longer hours than anyone I know. Because I have five people’s livelihoods [his children, mother and sister] on my shoulders now. Which is why I don’t have any f—k you money in the bank.’

Maybe it’s because, as he admits to me later, ‘No matter how much of an insider I seem, I’ll always be an outsider. I mean I’m still banned from Chateau Marmont – for nothing but being me!’ Which reminds me of former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s ‘seven room’ fame analogy: just when you think you’re at the best place or the top spot, there’s always another room you won’t have access to. There’s always more fame to be had. Only for Hilton to be allowed inside all seven rooms would surely kill his brand. He needs to be able to access some, but not all areas. He needs to be listed on the celebrity alphabet, but always a little way down. He needs to stay precisely where he is now.

‘Right now I’m a C-,’ he deadpans with a forensic degree of self-awareness. ‘I’m trying to become a B+, but I’m definitely a C-. When I was on I’m A Celebrity… I felt like a good solid C+,’ he goes on wistfully. ‘But you know, I don’t actually mind being a C-. Really. And you know why I don’t mind?’ Hilton breaks out into the widest, whitest grin. ‘Because I’m on the list!’

TMI: My Life in Scandal, by Perez Hilton with Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson, is out on Tuesday (Chicago Review Press, £20.90)