Paris Hilton Seeks Best Friend on New MTV Reality Show

Paris Hilton needs a new best friend and she’s turned to MTV to find one. I Wanna Be Paris’ New Best Friend! is scheduled to start filming in Los Angeles at the end of May. Though Paris says she still considers Nicole Richie to be her best friend, the heiress says that Richie is now too busy being a mom to her new daughter, Harlow.

The series was created by former VH1 executives, Michael Hirschorn and Stella Stolper as well as Paris herself who also joins them as an executive producer.  Paris describes the upcoming show as her opportunity to have a sorority experience. The contestants will live in a house together and compete in a series of competitions that will simulate life as a celebrity’s best friend.

Not since The Simple Life has Paris appeared in a series. You may recall her mother Kathy Hilton’s show I Want To Be a Hilton, which lasted only one season on NBC in 2005.

The cast of best friend hopefuls will include twenty contestants. Though casting has thus far been kept secret, a number of contestants will be chosen based on their site profiles, which can be created and voted on at ParisBFF.com.

Online casting for Paris’ show consists of just one round, lasting eight weeks. Entrants must upload at least three photos of themselves, one 90-second video and a blog entry. Entrants are required to describe such things as the wildest thing they’ve ever done, their biggest secret and the reasons why they would fit in with the socialite circle. Best friend hopefuls can also bypass the online voting contest and fill out an online application.

To date, the hopeful with the most votes goes by the username BenjyBenjy. He identifies himself as a 21-year-old from New York. With over 105,000 votes, I can’t quite figure out what’s so special about his profile. I guess he’s just invested a lot of time in promotion.

Coming in third with over 53,000 votes is Tay Zonday, a 25-year-old from Minneapolis most noted for his Chocolate Rain video on YouTube. He was the winner of the music category of 2007’s YouTube Awards and his YouTube page boasts over 30,000 subscribers. To date, his ParisBFF.com profile is simple and has yet to even feature one of his signature music videos. His first blog post says, “Thanks for all the votes. I should make a song about Paris.” Zonday’s quirky demeanor and penchant for writing and performing his peculiar songs could easily launch him from Internet celebrity to reality TV star. He’s got my vote to land himself as a contestant on the show but I doubt he’s got what it takes to hang with a Hilton.

The series will air for ten episodes on MTV during the fourth quarter of this year.