On Monday night, controversial gossip columnist Perez Hilton will enter the jungle and join the cast of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, and well, it’s likely to bring some drama.
The 41-year-old is no stranger to scandal and celebrity feuds. He loves stirring the pot and uh, spilling the tea.
On Monday’s episode, Perez will talk about one of his worst celebrity feuds, with former close friend Lady Gaga.
Perez Hilton spills celebrity stories on I’m A Celebrity during his first night on the show. Post continues below video.
Quizzed by his fellow celebs about his crazy celebrity experiences, Perez admitted he’s been in a lot of celebrity feuds.
“Uh, the worst one, well the one with Lady Gaga was pretty bad,” he said, prompting Love Island star Erin Barnett to ask what happened.
“Well we used to be really good friends and then we had a falling out… You know everybody here has experienced fame to some degree, but, and this is not an insult, not a single person in this camp has experienced fame like Lady Gaga did.
“When you have THAT kind of fame, it really warps your entire life, your perception, how people treat you and it was really hard for me to feel like ‘Wow! This person I thought was a real friend of mine betrayed me’. But now I look back and I’m like she was going through a lot and she’s no longer with any of those people that were at the beginning of her career that helped and that were a part of the team and la la la. It is what it is, and you live and you learn.”
“Do you miss her?” Tanya Hennessy asked.
“Um, we had a lot of good times, but I’m not sitting around missing her, no.”
It’s just the beginning of the celeb drama and tea we’re bound to learn when Perez drops into the jungle.
Appearing on The Sunday Project, Perez said he hoped to change viewers perceptions of him through his appearance.
“I would say the biggest misconception that people have about me is that I’m an awful human being, and I don’t think I am,” he said.
“[It] will be a straight-up fantasy, dream scenario, to enter the jungle knowing that probably a lot of Australians don’t like me, but then leaving and getting out there to the response like, ‘You know what, you weren’t as bad as we thought,’ or ‘We kind of enjoyed you,’ or ‘You’re are a really nice guy.'”
Born Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr to Cuban parents in Miami, Perez initially wanted to be an actor.
He studied acting at New York University, before trying blogging. His first blog, PageSixSixSix.com, became big enough that it was sued by New York Post‘s Page Six.
Forced to change the name to PerezHilton.com, the lawsuit only brought more interest in Perez’s work. He received employment offers from major celebrity news sites like InTouch and US Weekly but he chose to focus solely on the blog, which was huge particularly in the mid to late 2000s.
It was a decision that paid off. By 2009, Perez claimed to have a daily readership of nine million. He became the self-described Queen Of All Media.
Known for being extremely harsh in his unpacking of whatever is happening in the world of celebrity, and his signature doodles of penises and cocaine on images of celebs, he has been a fixture in gossip media ever since.
Friends (and enemies) in high places.
It has always been obvious who in the celebrity world Perez liked and did not like.
He had close friends, including Paris Hilton, who inspired his moniker, and Lady Gaga. But he also had grudges and many, many enemies.
For example, he regularly covered stars like Kirsten Dunst and Lindsay Lohan, who he nicknamed Kiki Drunkst and Lindsay Blohan, mocked celebrities in decline like Tara Reid and, was a "total bully" to former The O.C. star Mischa Barton.
Comments by Perez about Mischa included:
"Ever heard of a tanning bed, Mischa Barton? Or daylight?"
"Mushy Fartone gets dumped."
"So, Mush Mush is firing back and setting the record straight about her weight and the ‘puffy’ pictures."
"It’s nice to see her standing up for herself. It means she took the time out of her busy schedule of clubbing and ‘snacks’ to form coherent sentences."
On The Hills: New Beginnings, Mischa reflected on the torrent of abuse she faced from Perez.
"Perez was a total bully back in the day, he was awful to me and lots of women.
"There was a lot of pressure to be really skinny. It's hard when you're young, you take these things to heart," she said.
As his success in the media grew, Perez frequently found himself as a friend to those celebrities he was blogging about. That included his "worst" fued with Lady Gaga, who at the time was gaining fame for her popular songs like Just Dance and Poker Face.
They fell out in 2011, after an interview went wrong.
"What happened was we were doing an interview – I took two days out of my schedule when I was on a world tour to do an interview for him," Gaga recalled to Howard Stern during a 2013 interview. "In the middle of the interview he started asking me really terrible questions and he was being very negative about 'Born This Way' and we had had a lot to drink.
"He was supposed to be my friend and I felt betrayed, so I started crying. And then my friend had to come in and pull the camera out, they wouldn't turn the cameras off."
She continued: "He apologised, but I sort of felt like it was like, 'But I'm Perez Hilton so I'm allowed to treat you this way.' I looked at him and said, 'Just because you are who you are, does not mean that our friendship doesn't mean anything when the cameras turn on. So, now I see who you really are.' And I was done after that."
Their feud continued to play out in public, both often posting tweets out to their millions of followers slamming one another.
In 2013, Lady Gaga accused the celebrity gossip of stalking her, writing in a since-deleted tweet: "STAY AWAY FROM ME + MY FAMILY YOU ARE SICK TRYING TO RENT AN APARTMENT IN MY BUILDING TO STALK ME. LEAVE ME ALONE!!!"
In response, Perez said he was looking for an apartment to live in and did not know Gaga lived in the same building.
Celebrity outing.
Celebrities' weights, skin, career ups and downs, relationships and questionable paparazzi photos - nothing was off limits on PerezHilton.com. Not even their sexuality.
In 2006, NSYNC's Lance Bass came out as gay. He had, for months, been outed by Perez on his website. Perez was also criticised for outing How I Met Your Mother's Neil Patrick Harris, who came out later that same year.
Perez was highly criticised for his outing of celebs, but in an interview with Access Hollywood after Bass came out on the cover of People magazine, he defended the practice.
"It upsets me that people think what I'm doing is a bad thing... I know there is some controversy about outing people, but I also believe the only way we're gonna have change is with visibility. And if I have to drag some people screaming out of the closet, then I will."
From nasty to nice.
Following a number of suicides of gay teens in 2010 Perez published an anti-bullying video titled 'It Gets Better', but the backlash came swift and hard. It was hypocritical, according to basically the entire internet.
In October 2010, he announced he was going to change his M.O, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and a YouTube video.
"I'm going to do things differently on my website than I have in the past," he told Ellen.
"I'm not going to call people nasty nicknames. I'm not going to go the mean route. I'm going to force myself to be funnier or smarter... not out people."
In 2013, he told CBS Miami he was surprised by the backlash he faced for his video made to help young gay teens.
"I thought it was a great, easy tool for folks to encourage young people not to take their lives. [But people said] ‘How could you tell kids not to bully when you’re a big bully yourself and a hypocrite?’ I was like, ‘Whoa.’ I know in my heart that is not the person I am and if I’ve become that and have not been able to be aware of it, then I need to make some serious changes."
He said he lost himself in a character he created.
In 2013, Perez welcomed his first child, Mario Armando Lavandeira III, via surrogate. He moved to New York, and reflected on his persona.
Becoming a father helped Perez 'tone down', realising his wrongs and embracing his softer side.
"What I want is for people to not hate me," he told CBS Miami.
In 2015, his daughter Mia Alma Lavandeira was born and in 2017, he welcomed a second daughter Mayte Amor, also via surrogate.
Into the jungle.
Perez was in talks to appear on I'm A Celebrity in 2019, but producers went with fellow gossip reporter and eventual winner, Richard Reid.
"I was on Skype with the executive producer and they ended up instead casting a D-List version of me," Perez told the Daily Telegraph in 2019.
In a video announcing his casting on the show, Perez said the odds of him winning was not high because last year's winner was "an American, male, homosexual, gossip reporter".
He said he joined the show to have fun and to change perceptions, and even if a win is unlikely, he wants to make it to the end.
In interviews announcing his casting, Perez poked fun at his ability to cause drama.
"I’m going in pretty optimistic about camp life," he told 10 Daily, "but I might clash with everybody!"
He said he isn’t afraid to stir the pot between Charlotte Crosby and Ryan Gallagher.
"It’ll be fun, I’ll get to be a campmate but I’ll also get to do my job,” he told the publication. "I’m going to be interviewing them all and trying to get juice… and maybe see if I can break-up Charlotte and Ryan. It’s one of my goals.”
Oh. Things are going to get even wilder.
I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Airs Sunday – Thursday at 7.30pm on 10.
Feature images: Getty.
To support those affected by Australia's devastating bushfire crisis, you can donate to the Australian Red Cross disaster relief and recovery fund. Your money will go towards supporting thousands of people in evacuation centres, emergency assistance including cash grants to people who have lost their homes, psychological first aid, and helping communities prepare for future disaster.
Top Comments
I wonder how much they paid to get him in there....Richard Reid and him are chalk and cheese
He literally just made a “joke” video about Meghan Markle dying, he’s still a piece of shit.