Hilton turns to King for post-jail interview

NEW YORK – After being spurned by the broadcast networks, Paris Hilton is turning to CNN’s Larry King to spill the details of her 23-day incarceration in Los Angeles County jails.

The celebutante has agreed to do a one-hour live interview with the cable news host after she is released early this week, CNN announced Saturday. The sit-down is set for Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Both CNN and Michael Sitrick, a spokesman for Hilton, said she was not being compensated in any way for the interview.

“I am thrilled that Larry King has asked me to appear on his program to discuss my experience in jail, what I have learned, how I have grown and anything else he wants to talk about,” Hilton said in a statement.

King landed the exclusive after the socialite’s efforts to extract a lucrative deal from the broadcast networks backfired.

In a chaotic series of negotiations late last week, ABC executives said they were told by Hilton’s family that “Today’s” Meredith Vieira had won the interview because NBC had offered to pay close to $1 million to license Hilton’s personal videos and photos, a story that NBC rejected as untrue.

Subsequently, the heiress and her parents – now insisting that she was not seeking to be paid – sought to renew discussions with ABC’s Barbara Walters, who ultimately turned down the interview. Hours later, NBC officials informed the Hiltons they were no longer interested, either. CBS officials also said they did not want the story.

The rejections left the oft-photographed socialite without a major network platform for her post-jail coming-out interview.

By turning to King, whose nightly interview program is a staple of the publicity circuit, Hilton is guaranteed a conversational forum in which to recount her experience of being incarcerated, one she said has dramatically changed her.

Hilton is serving 23 days for violating terms of her probation for alcohol-related reckless driving charges.

Hilton’s appearance on the program will bump filmmaker Michael Moore, who was originally scheduled to appear on Wednesday’s show. CNN producers are working to move his interview to another time slot.