Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie Take the ‘Simple Life’ to the Opera in New Reunion Special Trailer

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are embarking on a new journey filled with personal history and artistic ambition as they aim to create an original opera — yes, an original opera — in the new trailer for their reunion special, Paris & Nicole: The Encore.

The three-part series finds the friends reuniting more than 20 years after the end of The Simple Life. The special will be structured around a very specific task: turning their wonderfully stupid nonsense song “Sanasa” into a full-fledged opera. Sanasa, for those wondering, is a cherished relic of the Simple Life days, which Hilton and Richie concocted while filming Season Three of the reality series.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, like one person featured in the trailer, “When you think about Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton, you don’t go to opera.” And to that, Richie bluntly replies: “You don’t?” 

And besides, while your mind may not necessarily go to opera, there’s no reason not to associate Hilton and Richie with music and over-the-top drama, which basically gets you halfway to opera. Richie is, of course, the daughter of Lionel Richie and was dabbling in musical comedy as recently as 2020 when she created and starred in a short-lived Quibi series called Nikki Fre$h, which documented her efforts to record an eco-friendly rap album. And Hilton, whose 2006 single “Stars Are Blind” has become a millennial pop classic, just released a new album of her own this year, Infinite Icon. 

The opera, however, is just one facet of the Paris & Nicole: The Encore. The new clip — gloriously narrated with cheeky bravado by Alan Cumming — finds Hilton and Richie doing a bit of their old Simple Life shtick, picking up odd jobs like a shift at Sonic or serving as guides on a Hollywood tour bus. It even looks like they’ll return to Altus, Arkansas, the small rural community where they spent the entirety of Season One.  

Paris and Nicole: The Reunion is set to debut debut Dec. 12 on Peacock.