Hello! You’re reading HeirMail, the only newsletter to come from me (hi) setting a Google Alert for the word “heiress” and then just writing about whatever pops up.
Sorry to pull you too far behind the curtain here, but since I started doing this newsletter, I wake up most Saturday mornings and put on Hot Ones until I can get it together to write.
If you’re not already a fan, Hot Ones is a YouTube show where celebrities eat hot wings while being interviewed. I enjoy the program so much that last week I decided to order $120 worth of Hot Ones hot sauces, the Season 13 package, to make my pod do a Hot Ones. Is being on Hot Ones my fondest dream? I don’t think I need to tell you now that it is. ($120? What an asshole?) The package arrived Thursday evening.
As real ‘heads know, there’s an order and a science to the sauces; a program designed to build to a heat crescendo. It’s a true challenge, DJ Khaled quit without finishing.
I usually watch old, pre-panny eps on PlutoTV’s Complex channel, but Sneaker Shopping was on, so to get the progression correct, I turned on the YouTube channel, First We Feast, and there’s it was, the latest episode, uploaded a mere twelve hours earlier: Hot Ones with guest Paris Hilton.
I just!
Details below — obviously watched it — but wow, my naivety in thinking I could start an “heiress” Google Alert newsletter, or even enjoy my favorite wing-based web show, and not be regularly confronted with my complicated and ultimately not very interesting feelings about Paris Hilton! I thought it was 2021!! With the new podcast and the YouTube movie and etc, though, she is very actively staging a comeback and I just need to accept that as part of the Google Alert I chose. But I do feel like she’s following me.1
CTRL + F:
Francesca Packer Bareham logs off (and welcome Wholigans!)
Paris doesn’t even know who Sean Evans is.
Lek, who is more than the Paris of Thailand.
From the rest of the alert: Anna Delvey press tour continues, the trial of Tecra Muigai’s alleged killer begins, a new-to-us ‘icon,’ a UK horror movie doesn’t seem up our alley after all, Gucci X Gaga, Doris Duke did it, checking in on Ghislaine.
Francesca Packer Bareham got a whole post dedicated to her deleting social media!
More importantly, FPB was featured on Who? Weekly this week — the best show, hosted by my buds Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger — for this first Daily Mail post. (And they generously mentioned this newsletter which brought some of you here, hi, welcome, we’re in an ouroburos of mentions.)
If you’re new and FPB-curious, some past coverage can be found here, here. My favorite short-lived plotline was when it seemed she was dating a ~dangerous~ former “bikie” whom I personally found attractive and projected onto in troubling ways, but soon thereafter she was confirmed to be dating her current, clean-cut trainer boyfriend.
Her money comes from Australian media, to start. Her grandfather Kerry Packer was renowned gambler, a designation that only applies World Series of Poker champions and people for whom money doesn’t matter. Kerry is himself the grandson of journalist and media empire owner Robert Clyde Packer, whose own dad was a customs official. Once, Frank Packer — Kerry’s dad and RC’s son and a big Packer deal himself — sent Kerry and his large buddies over to threaten a publisher whose paper her wanted to acquire, but the publisher locked himself in his office and called Frank’s rival Rupert Murdoch, who sent his own goons. Rupe won.
Anyways, on the substance here, Francesca deleting Insta, etc:
The Daily Mail, of course, contains one of the best phrases in tabloid passivity: “She's been making headlines since confirming her relationship with personal trainer Adam Cooper late last year.” Ah, yes, she made them. They were necessitated by the newsworthy nature of wearing matching tracksuits with her boyfriend, knowing a publicist, throwing a birthday party, etc. Talk to me when she’s started showing up and threatening Lachlan Murdoch!
Sure, the reason she can lead such an expensive and rarefied life, one tabloids want to cover, is because other people, with different levels of access to relief, have been similarly overexposed by her family’s media outlets, but still: this seems like a healthy choice. Being constantly judged on small shit sucks! Just another day in the inherited wealth ethics mines!
Estimated Net Worth: Siren! Siren! There are more recent numbers than the ones I’d been using for FPB’s mom Gretel Packer. While in 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald estimated Gretel had $739 million ($545.7 million US), Forbes Asia in 2019 put her at $1.6 billion AUD ($1.2 billion US).
“Paris Hilton Says "That's Hot" While Eating Spicy Wings | Hot Ones,” First We Feast
“Paris Hilton steps out in see-through beige dress and metallic silver top for dinner date with fiance Carter Reum,” Daily Mail
Paris kicks off Hot Ones by making it clear she’s only recently familiarized herself with show — she tells host Sean Evans that her friends say he’s cool.
The highlights:
She’s all set up at home with carafes for milk, water, and third substance, a “Good Vibes Only” sign, fingerless bedazzled nude gloves, and a “That’s Hot” mug. No specific word on what it’s like to be yolked to a catchphrase from when you were 20 at 40.
She was once asked to promote Paris beans, like beans beans, which if she’d taken the offer would have come in a pink can. (Also, sex dolls of herself, which she found scary.)
Her advice for going to the club is to know someone, or know someone who knows someone. While inaccessible advice for most, this is presumably accurate about how to get the best experience.
When Paris’s album (Paris2) came out in 2006, Banksy bought 500 copies, changed the song titles to things like "Why Am I Famous?" and “What Am I For?,” added topless pictures of her to the sleeve, and put them back in UK record stores for sale. Sean’s question about this comes right after Paris has explained that she and Britney are being culturally reexamined right now because they’re people with feelings, but she still says she thought this was “sick” (in the good way) and that Banksy is “such a G.” He was making fun of the character she was playing, not her, she says. I would quibble with the idea that this was materially different from Sarah Silverman’s bleh MTV Movie Awards joke, but Banksy is art, and art works on rich people rules.
“Sliving” is a Parismanteau for “slaying” and “living your best life.”
Paris apparently knows Rick and Morty, which might seem like it wouldn’t track til you realize it exactly tracks.
Paris is making an NFT art piece.
She names all of the dogs she’s ever had (“Harajuku Bitch,” “Prada”) and its 12 dogs since 2001, and what in the Elmyra hell, that is a lot of dogs.
“Explain that ‘Gram” is a segment on the show that’s exactly what it sounds like, but for some reason instead of showing, say this:
Paris posted this on Inauguration Day | @parishilton’s Instagram
Hot Ones asks about old pictures of Paris at the Monaco Grand Prix, wearing glittery, aughts-y dresses, sitting in and on cars. She explains: “I’ve just always been a tomboy.” I am being tested!!
She refers to the Monaco Grand Prix as the “most decadent” and “chicest” car race — it’s the only location that doesn’t pay for the honor of hosting Formula One. This year, luxury travel packages start at $4,995 for premium grandstand seating or $8,990 for exclusive hospitality, although I’m sure Paris is doing stuff that costs more. There’s a ton of money in Formula One: 2020 revenues took an $877 million hit, but the sport brought in $2.022 billion in 2019. NASCAR is closer to $660 million, total.3
I honestly wonder if this is a veiled ad for Monaco, because it’s so weird and they took such a huge hit. Here’s an article called “The Economics of The Formula One Grand Prix of Monaco” in case you want more numbers to remind you how fake and insane the idea of worth under capitalism is.
I want to break out of the jail of dicks that is writing about the same person every week but also I’ve never truly done a deep dive into the Hilton family lore which is, well, rich. Someday!
Estimated net worth: Paris is still coming in at $300 million, according to Express, Stylecaster, and Celebrity Net Worth.
“Meet ‘Thailand’s Paris Hilton’ Naphaporn ‘Lek’ Bodiratnangkura, the Nai Lert heiress, reformed party girl and Instagram influencer bringing Aman to Bangkok,” South China Morning Post
Naphaporn ‘Lek’ Bodiratnangkura is the great-grandaughter of Nai Lert, a property developer with an eponymous company who died in 1945 and was given the title “Beloved Millionaire” by King Rama VI, as per Wikipedia.
You might not guess from the headline of this SCMP profile, but Lek, 41, is in charge now, the managing director of the Nai Lert Group and CEO of subsidiary Nai Lert Park Development. (The “Aman” it refers to is a hotel chain owned by Russian businessman Vladislav Doronin, which is in control of several resorts in Indonesia and is supposedly coming to 57th and Fifth in New York in spring 2021.) She’s an influencer-business woman with an ever so slightly different melding of those two popular tastes so often paired together, like those Reese’s that have way more chocolate, but for contracts and well-lit selfies.
Here’s a compelling paragraph from the SCMP profile:
Apart from being known as “the Paris Hilton of Thailand”, a comparison she says she is pleased to accept because of Paris’ business prowess and charisma, Lek engages with her more than 100,000 Instagram followers. Her feed is filled with snaps of beaches, sleek designer outfits and her daily adventures. She tells us she likes to be “authentic and show her followers my everyday life by the work I do, the relationships I have and the fun I have.”
I too like to be authentic. Here’s her gram:
Lekstagram, hanging out |@lek_lai_lert’s Instagram
The rest is variations on a theme: she likes to work out, women in her family are strong, she looks inside for strength.
The family hotel, the Nai Lert Park Hotel, was storied (it’s where David Carradine died of, probably, autoerotic asphyxiation) and closed in 2017. Now, under Lek, the company has partnered with Aman to open a new, similar, co-branded venture right in Bangkok.
Housing people is Lek’s passion; as she told the Bangkok Post of the Aman deal, “Our project will be in demand as a second or third home for the wealthy's property collections.”
Estimated Net Worth: Okay, I really can’t find anything but: it seems like the family isn’t on Forbes Thailand’s richest list. Hmm.
From the rest of the Alert
Plenty of Anna Delvey content this week, since the fake heiress is out of jail and giving interviews. She says “crime pays, in a way” which is pretty funny, and compares herself as a “sociopath” to Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. No lies detected.
The trial has begun in Keroche beer heiress Tecra Muigai’s murder. Reportedly she gave her “overprotective, insecure” boyfriend a bunch of money beforehand. He’d tried to keep her from family and friends.
“Hailed as a Chelsea 'icon', property heiress Philippa Cadogan is known for giving pals tips on how to succeed in romance;” now she’s engaged. All that work pays off!
A new British indie horror movie is called The Heiress (2021) about sisters whose nana dies. Hollywood News likes it but from the description I think they’re not even rich (c’mon!) and the title is more of Hereditary uh, homage.
The Lady Gaga movie about the big hats and bigger Adam Driver is about the Gucci heiress, Patrizia Reggiani. The story is wild and I am kind of trying to save myself for the fil-um. The Guccis are mad.
The Alert caught this local news story about tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Doris’s friend Eduardo Tirella died in 1966 in a being-run-down-by-a-car accident, with Doris behind the wheel. Eduardo, a designer and homosexual, was leaving Doris for greener pastures before her, whoops, slip-up. Vanity Fair had a great piece about it last summer, highly rec.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother says jail is torture. “It is really degrading … this is not the way that a democratic country should be running its prison system,” he says. Strong agree! And most of the people in there with her didn’t even systematically groom teen girls for sexual assault by the world’s most powerful men, so like, imagine how they feel.
Speaking of following me, if anyone has suggestions for what this should be instead of a Substack, I’m listening. I’d like to move but still be a newsletter. I went pretty far down the rabbit hole of making this into a Tumblr before I realized… I couldn’t email you all.
Requisite note that “Stars Are Blind” bangs.