Host of the popular Bravo series "Inside the Actor's Studio" James Lipton has revealed that he use to work in the sex industry in Paris just after World War II.
On the 200th episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio" with comedian Dave Chappelle in 2008, Lipton confessed that he was once involved with prostitution. As the 250th episode of the series approaches, Lipton revealed more details about his time as a pimp in Paris in an interview with Parade Magazine.
"Paris was different then, still poor," he told interviewer Dotson Rader. "Men couldn't get jobs and, in the male chauvinist Paris of that time, the women couldn't get work at all. It was perfectly respectable for them to go into le milieu."
Lipton said he got into the business of prostitution as a pimp when he ran out of money and told a friend, who was working as a prostitute at the time, that he would need to move out of Paris and go home. In order to prevent that, she got him involved with prostitution where he made enough money to continue living in Paris for another year.
"Young women desperately needed money for various reasons. They were beautiful and young and extraordinary. There was no opprobrium because it was completely regulated," Lipton said. "Every week they had to be inspected medically. The great bordellos were still flourishing in those days before the sheriff of Paris, a woman, closed them down. It was a different time."
Before his time as a pimp was done, the distinguished host and acting professor was representing an entire bordello of women. When asked if he believed that people should pay for sex, Lipton replied: "I really don't. I think if you can't earn it on your own, then you don't deserve it."
Below is the interview where the tables were turned on Lipton for the 200th episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio" where Chappelle played the role of host. Lipton begins to talk about his time as a pimp at 1:03:10.
