The Hills saw many iconic feuds in its day, but none were quite so dramatic as the one between co-stars Heidi Montag and Lauren Conrad, who went from best friends to bitter rivals. Rumors spread about how Conrad supposedly made a sex tape with an ex-boyfriend, and Montag’s then-boyfriend Spencer Pratt was accused of being behind it. The edit made it out as though Montag was too lovesick to care about defending her longtime friend. Over ten years later, Montag is sharing how she thinks Conrad was able to control the narrative of what happened then and how she got painted in a negative light.
After the runaway success of MTV’s Laguna Beach, The Hills as a spinoff banked on Lauren Conrad as their star once again. In Heidi Montag’s viewpoint, though, Conrad was able to issue ultimatums that weren’t fair. About the feud, she told Metro.co.uk:
For me, it was really challenging because I really loved Lauren, that was my best friend, I had her back and I was a really good friend to her. And then the first opportunity she got when she didn’t have a boyfriend, she was critical of me and gave me the ultimatum: ‘Hey you’re either going to stop dating Spencer or you’re off the show.’ It was really hard for me at that point because I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t think you’d even be that way. You were just with a boyfriend I didn’t like and it was my job to support you.’ So I would have told her more of this when the show aired but [I felt like I couldn’t] because it was her narrative.
It’s interesting that Heidi Montag is wording her feud with Lauren Conrad on The Hills as simply a matter of Conrad not liking her boyfriend and wanting him out for what seems like no reason at all. She makes no mention of the rumors he was supposedly spreading to everyone of Conrad doing a sex tape. If anything, Montag is accusing Conrad of not being a good friend to her in the situation.
Yet Heidi Montag, who also stars on The Hills: New Beginnings previously with the likes of Mischa Barton, wishes she had explained her side more to Lauren Conrad back then. She continued:
I would have sat down and said ‘What are you doing, are you serious right now? You’re really ending our friendship for a show because you don’t like my boyfriend being on your show?’ I had a few more things I could say to her. It was just really challenging as there were a lot of older adults around me who were protective of her and judging me, bossing me around and treating me badly.
Many former Hills stars, including Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag, have claimed in the past that the show was fake and the drama manufactured. This allows us to look at Heidi Montag’s position in her feud with Lauren Conrad a lot more judiciously nowadays. Reality TV can seek to paint its stars in heightened moments of “hero” and “villain” in order to package the best drama possible. The only difference now is that Montag uses it to her benefit in the new iteration of The Hills.
