Screenshot/MTV International/YouTube
The MTV special featured Lauren Conrad looking back on her time on the reality series and featured some previously unknown (and unseen) information about her emotional breakup with Jason Wahler, her fights with Heidi Montag and Audrina Patridge and whether she'd do it again.
[Warning: The following story contains spoilers from 'The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now' special.]
On Tuesday night, more than 10 years after she first drove from Laguna Beach to L.A. to the sounds of Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" on MTV's The Hills, Lauren Conrad took a look back at her time on the MTV reality series in an hour-long special. The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now, which was announced on The Hills' 10th anniversary in May, featured a look at Conrad's life now, including behind-the-scenes footage of a photo shoot for Paper Crown, a business meeting with executives at Kohl's, which carries her LC Lauren Conrad collection, some candid moments with husband William Tell and a sit-down with her parents at their house in Laguna, where Conrad says she still spends a lot of time.
While Conrad admitted that looking back "doesn't always bring back the best of memories" and she hasn't rewatched the show or relived her time on it, she did reminisce about some of the series' memorable moments and her relationships with various castmembers, revealing behind-the-scenes stories. And, in what sounded like a surprise to Conrad on air, the special aired previously unseen footage, revealing some of what was left out from big scenes.
The Hollywood Reporter has compiled six revelations from Tuesday night's special.
Conrad wasn't sure if she'd get her Teen Vogue internship.
Skeptical viewers have long wondered whether Conrad would have landed her internship at Teen Vogue if her time working there wasn't part of the MTV series. The special didn't reveal what sort of negotiations went on behind-the-scenes between The Hills and Teen Vogue, but it seems the anxiety Conrad displayed as she was getting ready for her interview in The Hills' first episode was real.
Conrad's dad recalled that his daughter was "so naive" and "so nervous" when she went in for her Teen Vogue interview that she wouldn't get the internship. He tried to explain that it had already been arranged and recalled her telling him that when she was in the lobby she met a girl with "a mic pack on."
Conrad remembered showing up for her interview and waiting with Port, whom she called "stunning and well put-together."
"I'd give the job to her. She wins," Conrad said of Port.
When she dropped off Jason Wahler's stuff, she was crying partly because she could tell he wasn't sober.
The first-season couple's curbside breakup at the beginning of The Hills' second season was just one of the scenes that got an extended look in the special, with scenes that didn't make the series. In that additional footage, and as Conrad explained recalling filming it, it was revealed that even though that was the first time she had seen Wahler since they broke up, she was particularly upset because she could see he wasn't sober.
The additional footage shows her saying, "you're not normal right now…not acting normal…I feel like you're f—ed up and it's my fault" as he denies that there's anything off about him.
"That really broke me," Conrad said. "I felt a responsibility to take care of him, and I felt like when we broke up, I was abandoning him because there were a lot of nights where I was getting 2 a.m. calls and I had to go pick him up passed out in the back of a club. So I was like, 'Who's doing that now?' That was what was really hard. Nobody's taking care of him."
She added that Wahler's story has a "happy ending" as he's sober now and married and "very happy."
She didn't slam the door on Montag's "I'm reaching out, I'm trying" plea in the second season.
More extended footage revealed that Conrad's kitchen fight with Montag in the second season, where The Hills star tells her then-best friend and -roommate that she had "chosen" between her and Pratt, didn't end with Conrad slamming the door as Montag said, "I'm reaching out, I'm trying" as it famously aired on MTV.
The two argue as Conrad makes a sandwich, but as Montag pleads with her to keep talking, Conrad walks away, into her room, ultimately closing the door, but after Montag has stopped talking. She then tells the production team not to bring cameras in because she was changing. Montag goes over to her door and asks Conrad if she wants to talk about this when she gets back from Colorado, where she was headed, and Conrad says she doesn't want to talk now.
"Sometimes when we were filming and I was really uncomfortable and didn't want to be there, I would just leave," Conrad recalled.
Conrad's fight with Patridge began when Conrad saw that she'd installed a lock on her room.
Conrad and Patridge's friendship went through a rough patch, culminating in a tear-filled discussion, after the two of them moved into a house with Conrad's high-school best friend, Lo Bosworth. While The Hills indicated that the rift that developed between Patridge and Conrad was due to Bosworth not getting along with her friend's former roommate, Conrad revealed on the MTV special that the fight began when she discovered Patridge had installed a lock on her guesthouse door.
She went over there to drop off something Patridge had left out, Conrad explained, and she discovered the door was locked.
"That's what started our big fight, and then we weren't getting along living together," Conrad said.
Conrad's husband has "never seen" The Hills and doesn't want to know the version of his wife from the MTV series.
Tell makes a few appearances in the special, including accompanying his wife to some meetings with Kohl's and the CFDA Awards on a trip to New York. As Conrad explained how the two met and are now married, she revealed that her husband has "never seen" The Hills.
In fact, she added, once they were staying in a hotel and he was flipping through the channels and saw her in a club scene from the show, saying "Oh, it's you." But after he heard her tell Brody Jenner on camera that she was at a trendy pool "every Sunday," he changed the channel. "Nope, don't want to know that you," Conrad said of Tell's reaction.
Conrad would do the show again.
The Hills star wasn't shy about admitting that she didn't love being on a reality TV show. So it's somewhat surprising when, at the end of the entire special, she insists she'd "absolutely" do everything again.
"Knowing what I know now, looking back, I would absolutely do it again," Conrad said of The Hills. "It brought me so much good to my life. While it was hard at times, it brought me to a place where I'm really happy and I get to do what I love."
