Nicole Richie Breaks Down Her Most Perverse 'Nikki Fre$h' Music Video

From Harper's BAZAAR

Once Nicole Richie took up gardening, the transition to making eco-conscious trap music was inevitable. For around seven years, she's been tending to an edible garden and began posting photos of her harvest on Instagram "because that's what Oprah did," she says. She hashtagged her organic hauls #NikkiFresh and decided to take the tag up as a gardening stage name too. "Not all of my friends got it," says Richie. "They were like, 'Yeah, okay. It's growing food, it's not that big of a deal.' But I really wanted to express to the masses how wonderful and spiritual growing your own food is. I thought, 'In what medium can I express that? I think it's going to be through trap music.'"

Richie, who's been described as a "low-key goofball" on shows like the criminally-underrated Great News (a Tina Fey-Robert Carlock joint that lasted two seasons) and her mockumentary series Candidly Nicole, had been itching to record a comedy album. She had already discussed the idea with husband Joel Madden and his brother Benji, the Good Charlotte frontmen-turned-music impresarios.

But when she started thinking about blending comedy and trap, she had second thoughts: "I thought, 'I can't disrespect the genre because trap is trap—it's amazing. So, I'll go ahead and create my own genre.' Which is parent trap." "Parent Trap" has the same feel and flair of trap music, but with lyrics that speak to environmentalists, zero-waste advocates, Brooklyn moms, and flower children of all ages alike. "It's about what's important to me—eating organic, growing your own fruits and vegetables, being at one with the universe, and being connected to nature."

When Quibi approached Richie to develop a show, it was time for Nikki Fre$h's close-up. Richie had already hashed out what she wanted to sing about, but now she kicked it into high gear. She went into the studio with Madden, her husband, songwriter Sarah Hudson, and producer Andrew Goldstein to beat it all out and write the lyrics. Each episode of Nikki Fre$h revolves around a specific, and serious, topic handled comedically—the bees are dying; we're producing massive amounts of food waste; what, for the love of God, is so hard to grasp about clean water being essential to life?—and ends with a music video Richie and co. produced with maximum comic opulence. To Richie, the topics are "not a laughing matter at all;" the laughs come from the way her alter ego (and her high-fabulosity, gender-fluid assistant Jared, played by Jared Goldstein) engage with the subject matter. "If there's a joke," says Richie, "it's aimed at Nikki Fre$h."

In one episode, about the ecosystem implications of bee colony collapse, Nikki and Jared present an incredulous Bill Nye their pre-fall beekeeping fashion line and luxury "Air Bee-N-Bee" hive. Embedded in the absurdity of these scenes is a different kind of absurdity—that some people can't grasp the simple urgency of certain, very real environmental issues. In another episode, Nikki and Jared accost bewildered grocery shoppers to market research "vegetable tampons" and "crystal granola" before Nikki steps up on a platform to chant "Get ugly for the veggies," her rallying cry against the practices of supermarkets and food suppliers who simply discard imperfect produce. "Going up to people is actually no big deal for me, but that was a real moment that I'll never forget," says Richie. "I really wanted to express the cringe, the cringey moment that it was."

The supermarket scenes end with Nikki saving "ugly" produce from ending up in a dumpster and leads into one of Richie's favorite music videos: "Get Ugly 4 Tha Veggies." So BAZAAR.com decided to talk to Richie and video director Chris Cottam to break down the visuals and reveal how they straddle comedy, environmentalism, and Richie's over-the-top alter ego.

The Video

Cottam calls the creative direction of the video a surreal mashup of "the fashion photography of Irving Penn, the angular and staccato style of Sir Mathew Bourne's choreography, the classic crack house drug bust in movies like American Gangster" with some Janet Jackson vibes thrown in for good measure. The video was shot in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles staged to be the scene of an illegal veggie bust. Cottom used the industrial location, models in balaclavas, and tabletops full of misshapen vegetables to set-up the issue of food waste and the perceived illicitness of selling or consuming imperfect produce. "I'm completely aware of how stupid that sounds," says Cottam, "but watch the video and you'll see."

The Fashion

"Nicole is a great mix of style icon and comedian," says Cottam. "This means that we can make premium-aesthetic videos that are also funny. Once you know that you have that kind of talent in front of the camera, your mind can run wild. So I was taking my inspiration from the highest most respected forms of visual media"—like, say, those Irving Penn references—"before figuring out how to make is as stupid as possible."

Richie and Goldstein each worked with a stylist for the videos' over-the-top costumes. Sometimes too over-the-top: for the bees video, Richie wore a massive yellow gown that was "very hard to walk in," she says. "I loved the way it looked, but I had to have seven people help me walk. I mean, it was a very big dress." For "Get Ugly 4 Tha Veggies," Richie was able to stick to an easier set of glam get-ups, but Goldstein never got a day off from the all-caps FASHUN. For this video, Cottam says, "I talked to [Jared's] stylist Francesca Roth and said brilliantly insightful things like, 'Make him look like a gay, cosmic Asian cowboy.' And she would put together a look.'"

"The times that I've been with Jared when he wasn't shooting, he'd be in a dark green sweater and jeans," says Richie. "Very turned down, very sensible. So I think he had a lot of fun in these outfits. He loved his plastic heels. I think he took them home."

But the video's biggest fashion moment came courtesy of Nikki's entourage, dressed and posed like the posse in a rap video ... but wearing freaky rubber masks shaped like various vegetables. "I didn't even know that those existed," says Richie. "Once I saw those, I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm so excited to do my "Rhythm Nation" dance breakdown with all these dancers with ugly vegetable masks. This is my dream come true.'"

When I ask Cottam where he found such horrifying headgear, he says simply, "The Internet. Search term: rubber face masks that look like vegetables. It was really that simple." One in particular made an impression on Richie. "The corn mask was the most frightening. I could barely look at it, actually. I don't know if that one was my favorite or my least favorite, but it's definitely the one that stood out."

"When we received them, some were so horrific that we couldn't film with them," says Cottam. The corn mask made the cut, but it still helped Cottam find a line he finally couldn't cross while shooting the video. "There was a very funny scene where I got Nicole to spray the vegetable display in a large supermarket with a hose as Jared got on his knees wearing the freaky corn mask, getting showered in the spray. It was the only time where I realized I'd probably gone too far. The scene didn't make it."

The Veggies

But the million-dollar question about the making of the video was: Were the veggies they on-set in fact "ugly veggies?" Yes, says Cottam. "We saved them and gave them 15 minutes of fame. The art department went through the trash cans outside supermarkets. They did exactly what Nicole does in the episode when she saves the ugly veggies."

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