I read Ally Hilfiger’s new book and pulled out all the #dirt on Rich Girls. From “My dad invented cargo pants” to the infamous burrito meltdown, she explains it all.
First, for anyone unfamiliar with the show, this will bring you up to speed. Anyways, Ally released a new book last month called Bite Me about her struggles with Lyme disease and how it took over her life. In the book she attributes most of her bizarre behavior - and vapid one-liners - to the effects of Lyme, which can include cognitive difficulties, memory loss, joint paints, nausea, dizziness - the list goes on. So I guess her almost passing out while making a burrito sorta makes sense now? Anyways, enough of the intro, let’s get into the good stuff!
~#DIRT~
- In the first three pages of the book, Ally refers to Rich Girls as “the show that ruined my life"… so, yeah. She doesn’t seem to have fond memories.
- Prior to Rich Girls, Ally had a show on Nantucket TV during Summer ‘02 called In the House with Ally Hilfiger, produced by her pal Cary Woods (Producer of Kids, Gummo, & Scream). The show was inspired by MTV Cribs & featured Ally going to people’s summer homes around Nantucket, taking a peek at their ~lifestyle.
- Later that summer New York magazine ran a piece on her, prompting MTV to reach out to her in Fall '02. They set up a meeting with her for Halloween & Ally went to their Times Square building dressed up as an angel. The reps she met initially pitched the idea that she could become a VJ, but she wasn’t interested by the idea, so to not seem rude she suggested that she could help them ”create a show.“
- The MTV reps were intrigued by the idea so Ally pitched a NYC Prep-style program about ”the lives of private school kids in New York“ & how they’re like ”mini-adults“ - clubbing, going to fancy stores, etc., all the while diving into the ~darker side~ of rich kids’ lives, which includes drug addictions, eating disorders, & parental neglect. She writes: ”I wanted people to stop judging the book by its over and instead go deep into the pages.“ She also suggested that cameras could also follow around kids in the Midwest, to show how vastly different their lifestyles are. The meeting ended with the MTV reps asking Ally to write a treatment, so she called her classmate/friend Jaime Gleicher & asked her to write one up.
- Ally met with Jaime the following day at Fred’s, and Jaime liked the idea of doing a show together, so Jaime typed up the treatment focusing on ”Upper East & Upper West Side privileged kids and the real issues that existed behind their closed doors.“ Jaime accompanied Ally to the second meeting with MTV reps, and Ally claims the MTV reps were much more ”businesslike“ that time around, asking for the names of the clubs & stores the girls go to. Before the girls signed their contracts, MTV had them film a pilot first.
- Here’s how the casting process went down:
"Though Jaime and I were acting savvy in the MTV office, and all the television execs were very excited about the prospects of the show, I was worried. All I could think about was that the cool clubs where the wealthy kids hung out were not going to allow cameras to record them serving underage kids. They would have been shut down, and I would have been partially responsible for ruining people’s livelihoods. I thought, 'No way is this whole thing going to pan out. It’s impossible.’ But while I was thinking that, the MTV reps were saying, 'We want you to shoot a pilot. Get some people together you can follow to a club, and highlight the lives that are more unusual.’ My head was spinning trying to think of whom I could ask to film. I was already sorting out different locations that would depict this glamorous life in the best possible way, while showing the real issues that were happening. 'How can I get places to let us film in them? Will my friends’ parents even allow their kids to take part in such a thing? How many camera crews? What is the budget? How many kids will we need to wrangle? How many guys? Girls? Do they have to know each other? Well, probably, because we’ll need some dynamic drama.’ Spinning, I tell you. We started calling all the people we thought would be a good fit for the show. Finding them wasn’t difficult at all; the Professional Children’s School was full of privileged Upper East and Upper West Side kids, most of whom wanted to be actors. It was the perfect talent pool. I remember calling one guy who had a sexy, bad-boy, drinks-martinis-in-the-middle-of-the-day vibe, exactly like the Ryan Phillippe character in Cruel Intentions. Pretty quickly, three or four kids from PCS agreed to be filmed for the pilot. When we arranged for a camera crew we were set, except for one small problem. The night before we were going to shoot, our on-air talent began to bail, one right after another, until we had no one. The excuses ran from 'I can’t go because I have an audition’ to 'I have to go to the country house with my mom.’ We were screwed.”
~#NeverForget the 'Ryan Phillippe of Cruel Intentions’ AKA Michael V~
- And when it came to actually filming the pilot, here’s what happened:
“As I remember, the pilot was supposed to show the kids getting a limo, getting a room at the St. Regis hotel, going shopping, and eating at Cipriani; after all that they would go to a club. What really happened was Jaime and I got the limo, we got the hotel room, and went shopping at Henri Bendel, but when it came to going to the club I was just too exhausted. Luckily, the shooting schedule didn’t include the camera crew following us to the club. Instead they were to film us the next morning at brunch, where we would recap the night before. The next day, over mimosas, Jaime and I made up a night at the club in front of the camera. I talked about 'Jason’ and 'Michelle’ hooking up, how crazy it was, and can you believe how messed up Bridgette got? Meanwhile, I actually had been in bed by nine thirty with a fever, which I seemed to get every night and which had been getting worse over the past weeks. I thought the crew would know I was lying and how Jaime and I had screwed up, and I thought there was no way MTV would pick up the show.”
- Despite Ally’s concerns, MTV ended up liking the pilot & ordered a full season:
“[The MTV rep] called for another meeting pretty quickly. When we went back to her office, she told us that the head of MTV had green-lit the project and wanted us to begin production right away… The big news, however, came with a big condition: Jaime and I had to be the stars of the show… Apparently, they liked our on-screen energy.”
- Tommy’s reaction to the news:
“When I told my dad that the TV show had been green-lit he was ecstatic. 'You’re going to create, produce, and star in a national - international - show for MTV? This is awesome!”
- And Mama Gleicher’s:
“After talking to my dad, I went over to Jaime’s apartment on the Upper West Side. 'Listen,’ her mom said, 'this is a really great opportunity. It could lead to so many things in your careers.”
- Ally and Jaime signed their MTV contracts without a parent, manager, or agent present: “I never went to one MTV meeting with anyone other than Jaime.”
- Ally didn’t tell her mother the big news until after she signed the contract, and needless to say, she wasn’t happy about it:
“It was no surprise that she was very upset. 'We are a private family,’ she said. 'They’re going to exploit us, our family name.’ She asked if we had control over editing (how savvy was Mom, huh?). 'Yes, yes,’ I said, and I thought we did but we had no control, not even over the show’s title… 'What were you thinking?’ my mother asked. 'And what was your father thinking?’”
- Ally & Jaime got paid $36,000 to do the show.
- Some bits about filming the first episode:
“The first show was about shopping for the prom. They rented a limo for us, a form of transportation that I would never use to just shop around New York. I usually just hop in a cab, or better yet, take the subway. We went to private showrooms with my 'uncle’ Michael H. Michael isn’t really my uncle. [My grandparents] sort of adopted him at an early age.”
- Ally would constantly feel lightheaded due to the Lyme, so she would always need something to eat. Since they were always followed by cameras, and it was nearly impossible to get filming clearance from every restaurant they wanted to go to, she resorted to carrying around lollipops everywhere.
- The infamous “cargo pants” line was a product of what Ally calls ’Lyme brain’:
“I was so tired during filming I couldn’t think straight. I had full-on Lyme brain and didn’t even know it. I started to say things that I knew were incorrect but couldn’t stop, like, 'My dad invented cargo pants.’ What? What the hell was I thinking? I knew my dad didn’t invent cargo pants; I was probably trying to say that he liked to design cargo pants. Too late. That one made it into the scene and ended up being one of the main things people like to make fun of me for saying.”
- While consulting a healer over her then-undiagnosed Lyme disease symptoms, the healer suggested Ally should tap her “third eye” twenty-one times to relieve anxiety - anybody who watched the show will get what this is in reference to.
- After her first day of shooting, Ally realized she had made a huge mistake signing onto the show, but didn’t want to disappoint Jaime who really wanted to be an actress.
- For a ten-episode season, the girls shot six to seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, for five months.
- She reveals the story behind that emotional on-camera phone call to her dad:
“One Monday late in July, I had just come home from a quick and intense extended-family weekend trip to Nantucket. My dad’s family has a lot of complicated dynamics. I’d just graduated from high school that June, and that weekend my family had asked a lot of questions: 'What are you going to do now?’ 'Are you going to continue with the show?’ 'How about working for your dad?’ I had to cut the trip short to come home to shoot, and when I woke up Monday morning I realized I had not planned anything for the show, which was my responsibility. The camera crew was on its way and I was alone in Dad’s house. Shit. I might be witty when prompted by others, but alone, I just felt depressed and overwhelmed. I was also terribly hungover from the weekend… Sitting around doing nothing is not compelling TV. I began to feel irresponsible. The crew had driven up from the city, people were getting paid, the director was pacing. Although they didn’t say anything to me, I felt pressured to perform for them, or at least to try to think up something interesting for them to film me doing. Jaime had taken up the slack for me when I was away for the weekend, so it was my turn to be filmed alone so Jaime could have a little break. My anxiety started to build, and filming began to spiral downward… That day at my dad’s, I started to feel out of control, scared, and so very lonely. I needed a container to hold what I was going through. The confusion, physical pain, and heart palpitations Lyme disease causes are torment enough. Add a hangover, a camera crew for a reality TV show, loneliness, and, well, what you get is just what happened to me: I started to break down. And I could think of only one person to talk to about it. On the phone with Dad that day I was a lost little girl as the cameras rolled. Although I haven’t seen the episode in many years, remembering now how I exposed myself so publicly still makes me cringe. I came across like the spoiled brat I warned you about, whining and crying about how hard my life was while I was walking around Dad’s swimming pool. This was the first time I really got personal and private on camera…”
- And she even explains the infamous burrito meltdown, a moment on par with “Nancy Jo, this is Alexis Neiers calling…” in reality TV history, IMO:
“After the phone call to my dad, the episode devolved into theater of the absurd. I decided that the only thing that could help me was a burrito. There was nothing in my dad’s refrigerator, and I wasn’t about to order in food and wait for an hour and a half, sitting around being nervous or just flat-out fainting on camera. I thought it would make for an interesting on-camera activity for me to go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients to make burritos. Now, picture walking into a small grocery store on a summer holiday, and then picture walking in with a camera crew of four. 'Seriously? I am actually doing this? No one will let me go anywhere ever again!’ I also had no idea what kind of specific ingredients went into making a burrito. All I knew was that I needed something to eat and that I had better make something fast or I might pass out… I arrived home and called one of my closest friends at the time, Danielle. I needed someone else on camera with me and to help me make the burritos. All I wanted was to eat as soon as possible, and in a comfortable environment. My heart had been racing the whole day, my hands felt shaky, and I couldn’t think clearly anymore… As soon as Danielle came to the house, I hugged her and immediately began to chop onions. Danielle knew how to make rice, and I knew how to chop onions. We didn’t know how to cook or season ground beef or how to cook beans. Danielle began asking me questions. 'What do you want to do while the rice is cooking? What kind of seasoning should we put on the beef? Do you need the beans? What about lettuce? Did you know that burritos have a lot of carbs? What do you want to do after we eat? Where do you want to eat? How did the earth come to exist? Why do you think toenails are the shape and color they are? How do I break up with my boyfriend? What are you going to do after the summer? Do you think your parents will ever get back together? What do you want me to help you with? Ally, Ally? Ally? Are you okay…?'… 'Danielle, I am starving. All I want is to have the rice, with beef, on a plate, and in my mouth, as soon as humanly possible. I feel like I do not know how to make a decision as simple as how much salt I need to shake into the pan right now.’ 'Well, we have a lot of options. We could not eat, eat, order in, sit outside, go upstairs, take a nap… What do you feel like doing?’ I grabbed Danielle’s hand and ran outside and we jumped into the swimming pool with all of our clothes on - microphones still attached. I dragged her with me. I didn’t care what happened. I wanted to escape and feel free, and it was the only way to shut her up. It looked like a fun, innocent, and lighthearted thing to do in the moment, but little did anyone know, I was so overwhelmed that all I could do was jump into deep cold water to numb out. I knew alcohol wasn’t the answer. I knew I had drunk enough that weekend, and I didn’t want to be totally annihilated on-screen. And all I wanted to do was eat a fucking burrito.”
- And more #dirt on the filming process, and the well-documented feud between Jaime and Liz:
“When my friend Liz Meyer joined Rich Girls, things really became unhinged. Jaime and Liz didn’t get along. It was almost as though they were competing for my friendship. I know that sounds terribly self-centered, but that’s how it seemed to me… The discomfort of the situation pervaded every part of my life. The show used a lot of interviews where I was alone and talked right to the camera, a format that is now a reality TV staple. The reason they’re a staple is that there is so much pressure on the person being interviewed - the viewer doesn’t see the camera, the lights, and the crew. But I was defensive and, most of the time, brutally honest. One time when we were shooting interviews in a hotel, I was exhausted, so drained. The show wasn’t supposed to create rifts in my relationships. I was fed up with both Jaime and Liz and their childish behavior, and pissed at them because they had put me in this awkward situation. The director was asking me really uncomfortable questions about my friendships and perspectives on Jaime and Liz, questions that I did not feel comfortable answering, because I didn’t want to hurt either of their feelings. Then, in the middle of the interview, I told the crew to turn off the camera and I walked into a bathroom. I crawled onto the bath mat and began to sob. I felt so trapped, so freaked out, that I just wanted to end my life. The show hadn’t even aired yet and it was killing me.”
- Jaime was mad at Ally for refusing to do anything to promote the show:
“My costar and I had grown very distant, and I was afraid to tell her that I didn’t want to do the talk shows, TV spots, or magazine interviews, let alone film a second season. I had distance myself from her because I thought she probably enjoyed filming and the glow of the spotlight, whereas I was turned off by it. I felt violated by it. What I didn’t know was that Lyme disease was causing me so much pain and mental disorder that it was impossible for me to do what the show and Jaime wanted… I picked up my phone and I dialed Jaime. On the phone I was cold, emotionless. I think I left my body a little bit. I just told her the truth but did so in a rude and blunt way. I wasn’t going to have any part in the show anymore, I said. I didn’t care about the contract - I would get out of it somehow. I told her that I no longer wanted to be her friend.”
- By the time the show premiered, Ally was living in Miami with some friends:
“ When the MTV show aired in October, a bunch of us Miami friends gathered in [my boyfriend’s] living room. We laughed and hollered and made fun of the show from head to toe. Though it felt good to laugh at myself, and I was impressed at the clever way they edited us to make us look a lot more ridiculous than we actually were… I began to feel a little embarrassed that I was on national television acting like a dumb rich girl. I kept sneaking off to the refrigerator to take little sips out of a Jager bottle to round off the edges of anxiety I was feeling… At some point I received a call from Wendy at MTV telling me that the show was getting some of the highest ratings numbers they had seen in a while, but what she said was lost on me. I just wanted it all to go away, so I talked myself into the idea that the show was a bust. I began to realize otherwise one day at a gas station in Miami… I thought people were staring at me but I shrugged it off as paranoia until someone asked if they could take a photo of me… A couple of days later I’d gone to Target and I started to get a headache… I was standing there staring at the lights for I don’t know how long when I had the sensation of people looking at me. I turned around and a group of about six shoppers was watching me. 'You’re Ally from Rich Girls,’ one of them said in an amazed way. A woman aimed her flip-phone at me to take a photo. I felt like an animal in a zoo. 'What are you doing in Target!’ a woman squealed… I began to full-on freak out when the same scenario repeated itself several more times in the store.”
- Her paranoia over being recognized continued to grow. During one incident in particular, she was about to board a plane to visit a cousin in Orlando when she began to fear people were watching her, following her, and going to blow up the plane. She started to vomit, and a security guard took her to a private room to call her father - who didn’t understand she was having a breakdown. She tried renting a car, but didn’t know she had to be twenty-five, so she ended up wandering onto someone’s lawn, climbed a tree, and sat there for about four hours, crying & singing, until a friend picked her up. She writes: “I couldn’t walk into a gas station without being recognized. I thought someone was out to get me and that stalkers waited around every corner to attack me.”
- By the time the show stopped airing, she hadn’t slept, showered, or eaten in days, and roamed around New York City armed with pine tree branches (the scent, she claims, relieved nausea), and carrying books to give to strangers - either The Power of Now, or Mother Teresa’s In My Own Words. She sums it up best: “I had become that homeless woman you see on the sidewalk passing out pamphlet on Forty-Ninth Street, talking to herself.”
*~Oblig~*
- After that, she returned to Connecticut, where she began throwing plates around her mother’s house - a la 2001 Ice-cream-cart-toting-Mariah - & begged her dad for drugs to relieve her pain, causing him to think she was a drug addict & abusing things way more serious than weed (she does admit to using coke a few times in the book - she did not say, however, if it was only 10-15 times). After Christmas, Tommy returned home from a trip to Colorado as Ally continued to unravel:
“I woke up late the next afternoon to find my father waiting for me in the kitchen. I was still very angry at him. I kept telling him that I was sick, that something was wrong inside me. I began to think about the parasites again and that he wasn’t getting the message. I got out of bed, grabbed a silver tray off a table, went into the bathroom, defecated on it, and handed it to him. 'You’ve gotta get this tested,’ I said. 'If there are parasites in there you’re going to be sorry.’
- Following the feces-filled confrontation, she decided she wanted to go to Jamaica because of her bizarre in-the-moment obsession with Bob Marley:
”Finally it seemed my dad heard what I was trying to say. 'Okay,’ he said. 'I’ll take you to the airport and we’ll go to Jamaica.’ I went upstairs, took a shower, and put some stuff into a suitcase. When I came downstairs, my dad grabbed me and shoved pills down my throat. He was hurting me and I looked toward the security guard for help. He said, 'Mr. Hilfiger, take your hands off your daughter,’ and my dad released me but the pills had already dissolved. They did calm me down. They took me out to the car while my mother screamed, 'Do not take her! Do not take her!’ Her boyfriend was holding her back, but my Mom was kicking and screaming. She was trying to help me but she didn’t know how. They put me in the backseat with a security guard on either side and my dad drove. It soon became apparent that we were not headed toward the airport. 'Where are you taking me?’ I asked. 'Ally, I’m taking you to the emergency room.’ I yelled at Dad to let me out. I was afraid that there would be cameras and reporters and people would recognize me at the hospital. One of the guards assured me that we were going in a back entrance, that it was private and no one would know. Inside the hospital door, a doctor was waiting for us. The thought of seeing a doctor calmed me down enough that I walked into the emergency room without a struggle. And that’s when I started playing with a purple glove while he injected me with something… and blackout.“
- After spending some heavily medicated & sleep-filled time in the psych ward, which she likens to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, she was moved to the part of the hospital that functions as a drug & alcohol rehab (with alumni like Judy Garland, MJ, & Steph Seymour). The doctors had no clue about Ally’s lyme disease & simply assumed she was an addict. And to top things off, Ally’s roommate at the rehab admitted to having seen Rich Girls. Yikes! After four months at Silver Hill, she finally left in the spring of 2004, feeling better but still not cured. It wouldn’t be until a little later on that she was finally diagnosed with Lyme, coincidentally by one of her substance abuse counselors.
- Random tidbit, but in November '02, Ally wrote that she & friend Kate (Luckinbill maybe? She didn’t specify) were arrested at a bar in Katonah on Thanksgiving eve for underage drinking. Ally said she wanted to use the experience as a ”tool“ for her acting, so she asked the cops to treat her & Kate like everybody else - handcuffs, Miranda rights, etc. She even helped the cops fingerprint her, and asked them if her hair looked good in her mugshot (Okay, we NEED to find this mugshot)! When they searched through Ally’s bag, she was scared they’d find weed, but instead they found her fake ID and scribbled down ”Felony D“ - causing Ally to exclaim, ”Oh my god! I’m a felon!“ Her & Kate were locked up until the next morning, & a while later, Ally’s lawyer had the charges reduced & record sealed. I’m including this since it reminds me of one of my favorite Alexis Neiers gifs.
The rest of the book focuses on Ally’s struggles with Lyme disease & the many treatments she’s taken, doctors she’s seen, etc. I recommend you guys check it out since I literally had no idea how severe the disease could be until I read it, plus it gives Ally a lot more depth than the show did, so it’s nice to see her in a different light. I skimmed the ’Acknowledgements’ and spotted a Yolanda Foster shout-out too lmao. Hope my fellow Rich Girls fans liked the post! I need something else to read next, so message me any good recs!
~This town is our town, it’s so glamorous~
GIFs by hotasice