Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge, Perez Hilton on the Return of ‘The Hills’: ‘It Was More Than TV’

Spencer and Heidi Montag Pratt, Audrina Patridge, Whitney Port, Justin “Bobby” Brescia, Brody Jenner and Mischa Barton were spotted partying at Les Deux on Wednesday night in Hollywood.

If that sentence feels like a throwback, that’s because it feels like it’s 2009 all over again. It’s been 10 years since “The Hills” ended and now the OG reality stars are back with “The Hills: New Beginnings.” To celebrate their return, the group headed to their favorite Hollywood hotspot, which was transformed from Liaison restaurant and lounge back to Les Deux, for one night only.

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“This place has so many memories. I feel like I’m literally going back down memory lane walking in,” Patridge marveled to Variety on the red carpet. “It looks very different inside, but the memories are still here. The energy is still here.”

Most fans remember the club as the site of the iconic “You know what you did” fight between Montag and Lauren Conrad. (Both Conrad and Kristin Cavallari decided not to appear on the reboot.)

After that moment and for much of the original series, the Pratts were portrayed as the villains of the show, but now Heidi, Spencer and their son Gunner (who briefly joined his parents at the event) are relishing the opportunity to return to reality TV on their own terms and without the scripted storylines.

“For us, that was kind of the only way to have a more raw version of it,” Montag told Variety. “It’s different without the narrator and the production company is so different how they shoot. So, I think it was refreshing and enticing for us to film it this way.”

“I don’t think we’re looking for perception changes. I think that we’re just living our lives and we’re not there to win anyone over and prove anything,” she continued.

Port – who also starred on the spin-off “The City” — said she was nervous to return, but eventually welcomed the cameras back into her life. “It’s nerve-racking and you just don’t know what motives people have coming in,” she explained. “Everybody wants the show to be amazing and you just don’t know like what people are going to do or say to like make it a good show.”

Perez Hilton witnessed all of this group’s drama in real time as he covered their stories on his site and broke the story that became the biggest scandal in “The Hills” universe.

“It was the Lauren sex tape story [that brought the most traffic to the site],” Hilton recalled to Variety. “I regret that [story], but I did speak to more than one cast member…and I had no reason to doubt that I was being lied to.”

“’The Hills’ was more than TV. It was pop culture. It was everywhere, it was on the cover of magazines every week…people were talking about it. Now, other shows on MTV do well, but don’t get ratings like ‘The Hills,’” Hilton told Variety. “And let’s be real, this new version of the Hills probably won’t get the ratings the old Hills used to either, but it’s not about TV ratings and MTV knows that. It’s also about the digital impression.”

Inside the party, the “New Beginnings” cast — which also includes Stephanie Pratt, Jason and Ashley Wahler, Frankie and Jennifer Delgado, Brandon Thomas Lee, and Kaitlynn Carter Jenner — jumped onstage as Natasha Bedingfield surprised guests with a live performance of the theme song “Unwritten.” The assembled guests, which included other reality stars and industry professionals, totally lost their minds for the reunion moment, showing the broad reach of the series.

“It was MTV’s biggest show at the time. It was one of the first reality shows,” Bedingfield told Variety. “We have these huge shows now like, the Kardashians, these big empires, and I think anything groundbreaking like [‘The Hills’] is worth celebrating.”

As the “Hills” stars mixed and mingled with the casts of “Vanderpump Rules” and the “Real Housewives” franchises in the dimly lit club, it became clearer how much these reality stars influenced the genre. Patridge was one of the last “OGs” to leave the party around 11 p.m., after hitting the dance floor with “Vanderpump Rules” stars Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval and Scheana Marie (Sandoval and Marie made cameo appearances on the MTV series before going on to their own reality fame). Things may all be coming full circle, but the party ends much earlier now that the cast is all grown up.

“The Hills: New Beginnings” debuts June 24 on MTV.

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