If you're anything like me, between the years of 2006 and 2010, a little MTV show called The Hills had you absolutely transfixed. Sure, it billed itself as a reality show and was so obviously fake ("80% scripted," a talent manager who requested to remain anonymous admitted to Complex), but who cares? The drama-plagued cast of oh-so-shiny twentysomethings pretending to work but really just partying and dating in Los Angeles was like a glittery train wreck from which you couldn't look away. At the time, the idea of a regular person becoming a national, headline-making celebrity from appearing on a reality show was still rather novel, and The Hills stars were part of the first wave to truly capitalize on this decidedly 21st-century form of fame. The prime examples of this ascendency are, of course, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Pratt, née Montag.
In case you weren't a religious viewer of The Hills, all you need to know is that Montag was first introduced as best friend to the show's protagonist, Lauren Conrad. When Montag started dating her eventual husband Spencer Pratt, she and Conrad became enemies. Not only did Pratt and Conrad not get along, their animosity toward one another was extremely open and hostile. Spencer slowly drove a massive wedge between Conrad and Montag, until he finally resorted to a very public, very malicious measure to put the nail in the coffin of their friendship.
Spencer Pratt has never actually admitted to leaking the story that Lauren Conrad allegedly recorded a sex tape with her ex-boyfriend, Jason Wahler, until an interview with Complex that was released today. The story, which covers "The Afterlife of Heidi and Spencer Pratt," is actually akin to Watergate for fans of The Hills. Seriously, it has that many revelations from the couple, who alternate so frequently between delusions of grandeur and moments of regret that your emotions also ping-pong back and forth between thinking they got exactly what they deserved and feeling almost sympathetic.
In addition to his admission about the sex tape story, Pratt also claims that once upon a time, Kris Jenner asked him to manage Kim Kardashian's career. "[Kris Jenner] can deny it if she wants, but she comes up to me and is like, ‘Spencer, I want you to manage Kim.’ I literally started laughing." Refinery29 has reached out to both Jenner and Kardashian's reps for confirmation, but considering Kris Jenner is the controlling momager to end all controlling momagers, this anecdote from Pratt feels highly unlikely.
Pratt also claims that back in Kardashian's almost-forgotten closet-organizing days, she used to clean Heidi's closets. "Kim was edited out of Hills episodes organizing Heidi’s closet," Pratt told Complex. He threw in the juicy detail that, "Kim almost came out with a song."
The entire profile is a lot of peacocking — moments that feel more like the Heidi and Spencer we saw on The Hills trying to live the flashy L.A. lifestyle they thought would earn them fans and larger paychecks — interspersed with self-reflection. The Pratts know what they were and what they've become. Heidi went from being Lauren Conrad's bubbly best friend to the now almost-silent wife of Spencer Pratt, one of the most hated reality characters in TV history. Pratt uses this to his advantage.
Today, the couple acts as reality show "mercenaries" who are called in to act as the villains on various series. They've also found success on Snapchat, where most of the users are between the ages of 13 and 17 and have therefore never heard of Speidi from The Hills. The Snapchat generation "understands the difference between reality and reality TV because they’ve been brought up surrounded by the genre," Complex writer Andrew Gruttadaro notes.
Believe it or not, I've only scratched the surface of the wealth of information revealed in the depths of Complex's interview with Heidi and Spencer Pratt. These two really set the bar for reality show villainry, and it's been fascinating to follow their struggle to translate that brand (if you can call being the antagonist on a scripted reality show a brand) into the rest of their lives after the show ended. Although the theme song did warn them: "The rest is still unwritten." Read the full profile here.
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