It was a Saturday like any other, until Perez Hilton decided to throw a party. Having spent a busy morning at Wilmer Valderrama’s house filming a public service announcement for Voto Latino, the internet’s most prolific gossip blogger was itching to cut loose. The year was 2008. Barack Obama was campaigning for office amid a global financial crisis. And Hilton, at the height of his influence, had every It Girl on speed dial.
“I straight up thought, ‘I wanna throw the wildest house party ever,’” the 44-year-old tells Glamour. “So I literally invited—and I was specific, because I’m shameless and transparent—every famous person I knew. And I had a bunch of them show up.”
There was nothing in particular to celebrate. It was just a random weekend in October. But the images from that night have since become gems in the pop culture canon, immortalizing a pivotal moment in the lives of everyone pictured, on the precipice of superstardom.
“They were taken at a time when some of the biggest pop stars on the planet weren’t quite yet some of the biggest pop stars on the planet,” Hilton explains. “So it gives you a glimpse into a somewhat more normal era for them, where they were at a normal house doing normal things.”
Hilton didn’t have a house of his own yet but his best friend Eric, a social butterfly with a comparatively normal career in entertainment, did. That’s how, on a whim, an improbable mishmash of celebrities found themselves in a two-bedroom home somewhere between the Sunset Strip and Hollywood, a few blocks west of LaBrea.
“I remember that night vividly,” Hilton says. “I mean, it really is wild, the entire crew I assembled: Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Amanda Bynes, Josh Groban, Emmy Rossum, Michelle Trachtenberg, and the singer Mika as well, who I love and is a friend of mine.”
