Paris Hilton, je t’aime

One of Promising Young Woman’s many surprises is its eclectic pop soundtrack, featuring Charlie XCX, the Spice Girls and Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’. It also showcases Paris Hilton’s insanely catchy 2006 single ‘Stars Are Blind’, which accompanies a pivotal montage. Here, director Emerald Fennell explains her reasoning…

“The kind of music I like is so often dismissed, especially in movies. If it’s even used at all, it’s used ironically, or it’s seen as a kind of a guilty pleasure – and, really, people only ever say that about music that girls like. So I wanted to use music in the movie in the way that it means to me, which is that I think it’s very moving and very beautiful, and Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’ is genuinely one of my favourite songs. It came out when I’d just gone to university, or just before, and it’s just one of those songs that means so much in my life.

“When it came to making the movie, I knew I needed the most romantic romantic-comedy montage ever, and the song had to be just right. I thought: if a man knew every single word to a song, and it would make me love him more, what song would it be? And the thing that came to me was, well, it would have to be ‘Stars Are Blind’, because that just says everything about who they are. It means, a) they’ve got excellent taste in music, and, b) they don’t care. They like what they like, and there’s something very appealing about that.

“That was one of the greatest shooting days of my life, even though Carey and Bo were furious with me and everyone on the set was like, ‘What is this song? We don’t know this song. We’ve never heard of it.’ And then literally, about 50 minutes in… [Laughs] I wish I had filmed it – every single person, every single member of the crew, was dancing and singing along. It was just so wonderful.” DW