Make the Women of The Hills Famous Again

"So you know how Stephanie was at my birthday party?" Lauren Conrad asks her friend Whitney Port in a 2008 episode of The Hills, her tone hilariously deadpan. "I guess Spencer freaked out at her. Like, made her cry." Port responds, blankly, "Are you serious?" with the type of cadence you'd employ while reading a cereal box. There's nothing going on in this scene—literally nothing—but people were riveted. Millions of them. According to reports, 3.9 million people tuned in to the spring 2008 premiere of The Hills and an additional 5 million watched the episode online. Remember, this was before the era of streaming: You had to go home and catch a TV show when it aired. So the fact that 3.9 million people carved out space each week to watch LC stare vacantly at her friends says a lot. It speaks to how much this "reality" show captured the public's consciousness at one time.

And what a time it was. There was no Instagram, no iPads, no influencers. The Hills girls were the influencers—appearing on every red carpet, on every tabloid magazine cover, and at every nightclub in the early aughts. This was when paparazzi and Perez Hilton decided what mattered each week, and The Hills mattered. So much so that a group photo of Conrad, Port, and their costars, Audrina Patridge and Heidi Montag, was once worth $200,000. (That statistic, if you're curious, comes from Rolling Stone's May 2008 cover story about The Hills. Cover. Story.)

So you get it: This show, at its apex, had impact. But the momentum eventually slowed, ratings steadily decreased, and by 2010 The Hills was kaput. Not even a new monotone blond narrator by the name of Kristin Cavallari could save it.

But maybe reboot culture can. On Monday, June 24, MTV debuts a shiny new spin-off of the show titled The Hills: New Beginnings. It's mostly the same cast, give or take—subtract Lauren and Kristin; add, somewhat curiously, Mischa Barton—but they're on a different playing field. They're older, potentially wiser, some with kids, some divorced. Others just have famous Kardashian siblings.

MTV is clearly making a nostalgia play here. (The Hills is just one of many shows the network has plans to revive.) Patridge, who stars in New Beginnings, says this second act is about reconnecting with die-hard fans, the ones who have been there since 2006 and are probably in similar life stages as the cast. "I feel like our fans can really relate [to this new show] because they're from our generation," she says. "We're all growing up together."

Whether they'll tune in to watch is still up for debate, but the cast is certainly giving it their all. Here, four veterans from the franchise—Heidi, Audrina, Whitney, and Stephanie—relive the old days, tease the new ones, and spill just a little bit of tea.

Heidi Montag faced an interesting challenge in April 2009: Her new song, "Look How I'm Doin," was ready for release but she had no way to promote it. Remember, social media wasn't as potent back then—she couldn't just post a tweet—and news outlets were virtually ignoring her music. So she and her husband, Spencer Pratt, turned to the only tool at their disposal, the paparazzi, and took what is now an instantly iconic photo: It shows them kissing while holding a makeshift sign that says, "Look How I'm Doin on iTunes."

Stunts like this were standard for Montag and Pratt at that time. During their heyday on The Hills, they frequently called the paparazzi, staged laughably cheesy photo shoots, and sold their images to the highest bidder. It's a practice that earned them a reputation as famewhores (they themselves have used the word). But really, what's so different about what they did then and what Instagram influencers do now? Self-promotion is not only accepted in 2019; it's encouraged—and the endless ways to do it make it far less controversial. When you think about it, Montag and Pratt weren't so much famewhores as they were fame architects, laying down the groundwork for "sponcon" before it even existed.

"That was what was so frustrating for us," Montag, 32, says about the flak she and Pratt received for their early-aughts antics."Now you see all these A-list celebrities doing it for free on their Instagram. It's their platform, but they're still being silly and candid and doing these setup staged photos and promoting themselves."

This is just one way Montag feels she and Pratt were misunderstood. She says every eye-roll move they made was "strategic": an attempt to gain as much from The Hills as possible before it ended. "We'd always rather be rich than famous. But that was the avenue we were handed and that was the time we were in. So, for us, we were just being business savvy and capitalizing off it. Spencer was like, 'Look, we don't know how long The Hills is gonna last. Let's just go hard and fast and do it together.'"

Nowadays, though, Pratt and Montag's priorities have changed. They've experienced the extreme highs and lows of fame and have come out "stronger, happier, and better" than ever. Their one-year-old son, Gunner, probably has something to do with that. Motherhood has shifted Montag's mind-set and, initially, made her cautious about joining the Hills reboot. "For the first time ever, I was hesitant and protective," she says. "I've been waiting to have this child for so many years, and I hadn't left him in a year. Maybe for an hour a few times over a year. So that was really challenging for me: transitioning from being an attachment parent to having to get some help."

One thing that made this transition easier was incorporating Gunner into The Hills: New Beginnings. He's one of the few children featured, a decision that was easy for Montag and Pratt to make. "In the beginning we were like, 'If we're doing this, Gunner's going to be a big part of it because I'm not going to not be with him,'" Montag says. "As much as I can be with Gunner, I'm going to. Having such a good experience creating our family from reality TV, we always thought we would have him on."

Montag's husband and son might be the only members of her family we see on The Hills 2.0. When I ask about her biggest regrets during the show's initial run, she says, "Involving my family." She's talking about her mother, Darlene, and sister, Holly, whom she brought into the mix because "other cast members wouldn't film with us." "We didn't have enough storylines," she says. "There was a lot of pressure to have some extra drama that transitioned into real drama and miscommunication. It took me a few years to really rebuild those relationships with my family."

Another regret was her decision to undergo 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day. Montag made headlines in 2010 for all the work she had done, including a breast augmentation, nose job, and having her ears pinned back. "I didn't realize what it was," she says. "At the time I was just so impulsive, and I'm hearing like, 'Oh, over $100,000 worth of surgery for free.' I'm like, 'Yes, great!' I love a discount at a shoe store! All this free surgery and this amazing doctor? I thought that it would be really quick. I was so young and had so much going on that I didn't stop and think about it."

Montag had Pratt to help cope with all the trauma. Contrary to what the tabloids reported 10 years ago, their love is very much real. The fact they're still together—and not at the height of their fame anymore—supports that. Meeting Pratt was, obviously, Montag's biggest high from The Hills. "We're such a team and we could support each other through it," she says. "For us, to be able to work together in that capacity and to have that much fun and to be so young and successful, I think that we really won The Hills. We had each other and so much fun through it all. "

They're having fun now too—but Montag has a new, ironclad philosophy about everything: "My priority is my husband, my son, my family, and knowing to not make those mistakes again."

Audrina Patridge kept using a specific phrase during our chat about The Hills: New Beginnings: "moving forward." The show is, in effect, how she's metaphorically closed one painful chapter of her life and started another. In November 2016, Patridge married professional BMX rider Corey Bohan, whom most of us met for the first time on the original Hills. Several months prior they had welcomed a daughter, Kirra Max, but their family life ended in September 2017, when Patridge filed for divorce.

According to People magazine, Patridge sought a restraining order against Bohan after a string of violent outbursts made her fear for both her and her daughter's safety. In December 2018 their divorce was finalized, and an attorney for Patridge released this statement: "Marital status is terminated and property issues resolved. The parties are participating in mediation early next year to resolve child custody and Corey's request for attorney fees."

Those thinking Patridge will divulge more information about this on The Hills: New Beginnings are wrong. Yes, she addresses the situation with Bohan briefly, but it's not her focus. "It was the very first time I ever talked about it to anyone publicly aside from my inner circle," Patridge, 34, tells Glamour. "So we touch base on it. People will understand what I was going through. But it's more about moving forward. It's not so much about all that negativity and the mess. It's more about, 'OK, where do we go from here?'"

Where, but also who. A big narrative MTV is teasing with the Hills reboot is Patridge's relationship with Justin Brescia—also known as Justin Bobby—the long-haired, burping hairdresser whom she dated on the show's original run. Some of the only new footage we've seen is of these two reuniting at dinner and clinking glasses as Patridge calls Brescia a "friend." But it's a bit deeper than that: When I ask her whether things with Brescia turn romantic this season she says, "TBD. I don't know! Justin and I, you know us, we have all our ups and downs and there's always something between us." That something, Patridge says, is "juicy," but she won't say anything specific.

You can't think about Patridge and Brescia's relationship without remembering the bubble in which we first watched it: one characterized by supermarket tabloids and trashy blogs. Their couple spats were the bread and butter for a very specific era in celebrity news. Patridge's memories of those days are vivid. "This has been a wild ride, to say the least," she says. A ride that, for her, crystallized when she, Lauren Conrad, Whitney Port, and Heidi Montag appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in May 2008.

"When you're in it, you don't realize [what's going on]. Even when people are coming up to you and wanting photos and giving advice—it's all so surreal, and it still is," she says. "But when Rolling Stone came out and talked about how The Hills was such an iconic show and started reality TV, it just put things in perspective that you don't always think about because you're in it."

That was more than 10 years ago, though. Patridge and the rest of the cast have matured considerably since then, and she says that's reflected on New Beginnings. "In the original show we were 19 to in our mid-20s, so that was all about dating, getting to know who we were, friendships, relationships, and going out," she says. "It was a whole different lifestyle, and now we're in part two of our lives, where we're married or going through divorces or having kids."

But this doesn't mean the show skimps on the late-night escapades that made it so addictive. There's still plenty of intrigue to go around, both inside the club and out. "[As parents] you still have your fun nights out. You still work. You still have your babies," Patridge says. "It's all about balance and trying to figure out how it all works. Just because you're a parent doesn't mean your life stops."

It says something that Whitney Port's most dramatic moment on The Hills was when she fell down the stairs while filming a segment for Good Morning America. You remember: Port was a Teen Vogue intern at the time and tasked with appearing on camera for GMA wearing an iconic Oscars gown⁠. But 20 seconds into the shoot, she took a tumble, and tears soon followed. The emotion she displayed was akin to Heidi's crying about her friendship with Lauren or Audrina's shedding tears over Justin. For Port, her career was the thing that worked her up—not a snub at Les Deux or a perpetually belching ex-boyfriend. That's why she typically stayed above the fray on The Hills; she was the voice of reason back then, and still is on The Hills: New Beginnings.

"I definitely still play the role that I am, which is the friend that people tend to talk to while they're having a lot of issues," Port, 34, tells Glamour. "I'm not necessarily the one causing any drama, which is probably not surprising."

What might be surprising, though, is Port's decision to keep her family life offscreen. (She's married to producer Tim Rosenman, and they have a baby boy named Sonny.) Her YouTube channel, which boasts more than 82,000 subscribers, has a steady stream of motherhood content. So why keep it out of The Hills? Well, for precisely that reason: "If you want to see [me as a mom], there's no shortage of that on my social media. The show is really more about how the cast has reconnected and the social inner workings of the group."

Port's husband and son did, however, inform the way she approached The Hills this time around. "I felt like I had to protect more," she says. "I feel like earlier it was just me and I was responsible for myself, and if I said or did anything wrong or bad, the only person that had to pay consequences for that was me. Now I feel like I've grown up, and I wanted to be conscious of how any of my behavior or actions would affect my family. "

One thing Port isn't too worried about affecting her family is the scrutiny that may come from The Hills’ returning. She wasn't fazed by the paparazzi or tabloids in 2007, and she certainly isn't now. "I grew up in L.A. I went to a private school in Santa Monica. I was surrounded by a lot of famous parents and a lot of wealth. And so, for me, it wasn't that impressive," she says. "I'm me and I feel like I lead such a normal life. No one treats me really any differently. It's hard for me to consider myself anything other than me. Not, like, the 'famous' me."

Port had this "I'm me" mentality while shooting The Hills: New Beginnings, as did the rest of the cast. The result, she says, is a much more "mature" version of the show—more grit, less gloss: "I think that the production company was much more hands-off this time around and really let everybody just be themselves, do their thing, and say what they needed to say. It was less structured, and that's both good and bad."

What Port means by this is a mystery. MTV hasn't made advance screeners of The Hills: New Beginnings available to journalists yet, and promos for the show rely heavily on archived footage. But one thing she guarantees is that her style is way chicer in the reboot. (Not that it wasn't before. Please see all these looks.)

"My fashion choices on The Hills were so regrettable," Port says, laughing. "The amount of times that I wore inappropriate tank top dresses to a Teen Vogue meeting or a top with no bra—such insane things that I thought were appropriate that I wish I could take back."

"I would rather kiss the floor than ever kiss you again. I'm sure that would be more sanitary," Stephanie Pratt fires off to her ex-boyfriend, Spencer Matthews, in a 2014 episode of Made in Chelsea, the reality show that catapulted her to British superstardom. Her attitude here is drastically different than it ever was on The Hills: She's defiant, opinionated, and completely unafraid to call this fuckboy out on his shit. Years of working on U.K. reality TV (she's also done Celebrity Big Brother) helped Pratt shed the timid persona from her days sitting in Lauren Conrad's fashion class.

"I don't care if I'm going to offend someone," Pratt, 33, tells Glamour. "I'm not going to be fake. I'm not going to smile at people that I don't like. I'm also not going to let people do things that are wrong without calling them out. I just don't care. I'm doing what's right for me, not looking out for my reputation. I don't care about my reputation."

Knowing that, it's not surprising to hear Pratt is rumored to be the "villain" on The Hills: New Beginnings. Google her name right now and you'll see story after story alleging she's on the outs with her brother, also named Spencer, and his wife, Heidi Montag. That feud, Pratt says, is explored on this reboot: "It's definitely something you won't want to miss," she tells me without offering any details.

So how did Pratt make this transformation? She credits everything to London, where she moved shortly after wrapping The Hills in 2010. "I just grew up and became independent," she says. "Being around the Brits for so long, they don't pussyfoot around with anything. They confront you. They're upfront. And that's kind of how I've been living my life."

This newfound transparency is crystal clear throughout my conversation with Pratt. She doesn't hold anything back—including some tidbits from her early days on The Hills. For one, did you know she and Conrad were actually friends back then and kept their off-camera relationship a secret from Spencer? "After school, we'd always hang out," she says. "The producers, we'd call them and say, 'If anyone asks where either of us are, say we drove home.' I was hiding being friends with her. A lot of people don't know that we were hanging out all the time. We were scared of the wrath."

The wrath of her brother, presumably, who frequently called her out on the OG Hills for befriending Conrad. He brought Pratt on the show to be Montag's pal, and she spent the majority of her time onscreen trying to fix Montag and Conrad's friendship. "Looking back, with everything that I know, I should've been so keen to help them not be friends," she says. "I was not privy to all the bad."

Pratt wasn't privy to the paparazzi, either. Another piece of retro gossip she shared? Photographers were relentless—and pretty scary—every time she was with Conrad. "When we were at school, they were hiding in bushes," she says. "And then when I would be driving with her, there'd be two cars following her and she couldn't lose them. That's when I was really like, 'Wow.'"

She's less doe-eyed about media attention these days. "I don't really find it annoying," she says. "A lot of photographers in London—I've got such great relationships with them. I don't know, it's really nice. I'm sure A-list celebrities hate them, but little old me? It's nice. They're like friends. I love seeing them. I'll ask about their kids."

Speaking of kids, Pratt has a very specific opinion about her Hills costars' children appearing on the show. "At first I was not down at all," she says. "I was like, 'I don't need to see babies and go to baby parties. This is not my life. I like being a socialite and going to parties.' I think in the beginning I might look like I don't like kids. But once I met the kids? Obsessed."

Viewers will undoubtedly be obsessed with the kids too—and the overall show, according to Pratt. "Everything fans are thinking is probably not even the case," she says. "I watch Housewives. I watch Vanderpump. I watch everything. This drama does not compare to theirs. Every episode is nuts. The show is going to be the biggest surprise."

One thing that won't surprise Pratt? If viewers don't embrace her new persona. "I've been on reality TV for 10 years," she says. "I can't be anything other than [real]. So if you don't like me, then you don't like me. I'm not going to lose sleep."

The Hills: New Beginnings premieres Monday, June 24, at 10 p.m. ET on MTV.

Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrosa92.

Originally Appeared on Glamour