Ksenia in action on the set of Circus With Celebs Show.
Sobchak has been dubbed the Paris Hilton of Russia even though the two bear little resemblance: Hilton is tall, lithe, striking; Sobchak is shorter, a pretty girl, no doubt, but hardly a standout in a country teeming with standouts. Anyway, Sobchak apparently doesn’t like being compared to an American rich-girl sex kitten (or maybe she does, just a little), and before long she launches a preemptive, anti-Paris strike. “I like this idea that what we are doing on my program is taking an image like Paris Hilton, like this dumb blond doing nothing, but we are showing it in a fun way—absurdly,” she says. But that was Ksenia Sobchak up there in the spotlight, yes? This is reality television. Sobchak smiles and shakes her head. That’s Ksenia Sobchak playing Ksenia Sobchak. “This character,” she says, “is my hero. She can be in this pool with naked boys. She can be absurd. I am trying to speak to people through parody.” Much like Borat, she says. Sobchak is a huge fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, even though his film was banned in Russia. “In a humorous way, he touched on very serious issues—anti-Semitism, middle-class culture, going to church.”
Not that The Blonde in Chocolate has similarly lofty goals. It’s just that Russia in the early 21st century is a place in dire need of parody. “People who have money here,” she says, “unfortunately, they still want to show off, wear all this jewelry. They haven’t gotten used to it like they have in Europe or the United States. We still have this”—she pauses—“this Arab touch.” Despite the influx of luxury retailers, the money, the unquenchable thirst for all things Italian, people haven’t figured out how to think about fashion, why it’s not okay to unbutton your shirt to your navel, why too much eau de whatever is off-putting. Russia, as any semi-sentient being who has spent a night at First or Diaghilev or any of Moscow’s top-tier clubs knows, is living through an era of very bad taste. Sobchak implies as much without alienating her audience; she skewers, but subtly. “Thank God I live in Russia in these times,” she says, “the total chaos, the total absurdity of things.”
