Whitney Port explains why she decided to join 'The Hills' reboot
You’re not the only one wondering just how the reboot of The Hills will go.
Whitney Port, an original cast member who’s signed on for next year’s The Hills: New Beginnings, told Yahoo Entertainment this week that she just started filming and hasn’t met announced newbies Brandon Lee and Mischa Barton.
She said it’s too soon to tell how different the show will be from its predecessor, which ran from 2006 to 2010. “I think you’ll just have to wait and see,” Port teased.
It sure sounds like a whole other show so far.
Neither Lauren Conrad, the main character in the Laguna Beach spinoff, nor her replacement, Kristin Cavallari, will be part of the project. Lee, the son of rocker Tommy Lee and actress Pamela Anderson, and Barton, who’s known for starring on The O.C. from 2003 to 2006, will star alongside Port and other Hills cast members: Spencer Pratt and wife Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge, Brody Jenner, Stephanie Pratt, Jason Wahler, Frankie Delgado, and Justin “Justin Bobby” Brescia. Some of their family members have joined the show too. (Port has said that her 14-month-old son, Sonny, and her husband, Tim Rosenman, will most likely appear.)
Port has said she believes the drama on the the new Hills will be real — another deviation from at least some storylines featured on its predecessor.
“I definitely don’t think it’s going to be scripted,” she told Cosmopolitan in September. “[Producers are] really going to look at what’s actually going on in our lives. There’s probably enough happening in all of our lives that it will speak for itself and [drama] won’t have to be created. Fans and viewers can see right through the fake stuff.”
For her part, Port said she hasn’t changed much — other than being married for almost three years and having a son.
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“But I think in terms of who I am that I’ve really stayed the same,” Port said. “I think that I was always motivated and career-focused and a good listener, and I feel like I’m still those things. I don’t really think that I’ve changed too much. I just think that I’ve matured.”
Port left the original show in 2008 to star in her own series, The City. Cameras followed her to New York City, where she worked with designer Diane Von Furstenberg. She now has multiple projects of her own, including her work at Bundle Organics, the line of juice, tea, and snacks for pregnant and nursing women she founded. Port’s the chief brand director.
It’s something that’s close to her heart, as is her partnership with Lactaid milk, the lactose-free dairy product that her family uses at home. It helps make her lactose-intolerant husband’s life “a little bit more comfortable,” she said.
The other thing she really cares about, the reason that she joined the spinoff at all, however different from the original it might end up looking: to represent working moms.
Port wants to give the message that “it’s OK, it’s normal to feel stressed, and it’s normal to feel overwhelmed,” she said. “And to try to not put so much pressure on ourselves to always feel this balance that everybody’s constantly talking about, but to be more at peace with it and be more present in the situations or the choices that you’ve made.”
So is Port happy with the choice she made to sign on for more reality TV?
“So far, yes,” Port said. “[Later], the answer may be different, but so far, yes.”
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