10 Revelations From ‘The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now’ Anniversary Special

Back on May 31, 2006, MTV aired one of its most popular reality shows on its roster, The Hills. Back then reality TV was a bit more sparse and a bit more like scripted shows and fans of Laguna Beach were excited to follow some of their favorite stars to the next chapter of their lives with The Hills. In honor of the 10 year anniversary of the show, MTV convinced star Lauren Conrad to do an anniversary special, and she definitely did not disappoint! In The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now, Conrad looked back on her time at the show which she has greatly distanced herself from and revealed so much more about what was really happening, and what MTV never aired. Here are the 10 best spilled secrets and revelations from Conrad’s return to MTV with the special!

10. Teen Vogue Reality

Maybe because she was on a reality show for quite some time, it seems Lauren had a difficult time sometimes distinguishing her real life from the show, and one of those confusing moments was when it came to her job at Teen Vogue. Naturally the entire job had been set up for her, and there was basically no chance she wasn’t going to get it, but Lauren had no idea. Producer Sophia Rossi stated, “She really thought she worked at Teen Vogue,” and Lauren added, “I really did! I never assumed anything was mine, especially in that situation.” Even Lauren’s dad, Jim, chimed in saying, “It was cute, she was so naive. When she was going for her interview for her job with Teen Vogue, she was so nervous about whether or not she was going to get the job.”

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9. Brody Jenner Showmance

In the years since leaving the show, Lauren Conrad has spoken out about the fact that MTV pushed her and Brody together, but it was never real, and she set the record straight on the special. “I definitely had a crush on Brody but the funny thing was, we had zero chemistry. He was my friend, I enjoyed spending time with him, but it always felt forced.” She added that she went along with the fake romance because she knew it was essential to the show. “There was so much pressure on me at that point for me to get a boyfriend or date someone who would be on camera that I just let them.” However, that didn’t make the romance any easier as she also revealed that they spent a lot of time re-filming scenes of the two kissing because the chemistry wasn’t real and a scene aired at the special showed Lauren breaking away from the kiss and saying, “Can we please be done!? This is the most awkward thing ever!”

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8. Kim Kardashian Cameo

Before Kim Kardashian was a major reality star and married to Kanye West, she was best friends with Paris Hilton and making a name for herself with a sex tape. With her name just starting to light up headlines, she almost appeared on The Hills thanks to the fact Brody Jenner is her stepbrother. The unseen footage was aired on the special and shows Kim speaking with Heidi Montag about her pet jellyfish and going to the VMAs while attending Spencer Pratt and Heidi’s apartment-warming party.

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7. How She Really Felt

Despite being the central star of both Laguna Beach and The Hills, Lauren was never comfortable in front of the cameras. She hinted that some of her co-stars absolutely loved it but, as for herself, she revealed, “I never loved being on camera. A lot of people want to be on camera. The show isn’t something I like to relive. I don’t go back and watch the show. For me, it doesn’t always bring back the best of memories.” Even though she felt this way, she also admitted that she still took it “very seriously.” ” I felt like I had an obligation to share everything I was going through and that was hard because I think that if you want to give someone the truth, you have to give them the whole truth.”

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6. Parental Support

While many would be embarassed for their family, especially their parents, to see them on reality TV, that was one thing Lauren never had to worry about. “Hot tip, if you’re going to be on reality television, tell your parents about it,” Lauren laughed. Her dad added, “We had to know it all. We have a pretty open relationship with Lauren anyway, we’re not judgmental. We didn’t want her to be afraid to tell us anything really.” Lauren’s mom Kathy also said, “It was cool. She handled herself beautifully, what’s not to like? There were very few things that happened on the show that we didn’t know about!” Her parents are so proud in fact that in the special, when Lauren goes to her parents’ new home, we can see her mom has framed all of the magazine covers Lauren had been on and displayed them in the house.

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5. Making Friends

As part of the special, Lauren also opened up about the real relationships with her friends on the show. She said that she met former best friend Heidi Montag while in textiles class at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. “It was rough, I didn’t make a lot of friends,” Lauren said. “Heidi walked up… and said ‘Want to be friends?’ She was the friendliest person I’d ever met.” As for her first impressions of Audrina Patridge and Whitney Port, she said, “Audrina was our very pretty neighbor. I think she was the first friend I made in LA. Meanwhile when she met Whitney at the Teen Vogue interview, Whitney was “stunning and well-put together, and I was like, ‘I’d give the job to her. She wins!'”

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4. The Speidi Fight

One of the longest running storylines that has continued way past the show has ended has been the mega-fight between Lauren Conrad, her former best friend Heidi Montag and Heidi’s then-fiance Spencer Pratt. At the time, Spencer spread a rumor that Lauren had a sex tape, and she had to do a lot of damage control because of his vicious rumor. In never-before-seen footage aired from the confrontation Lauren yells, “MTV should care what Spencer did to me! It’s not okay that they let him up here! It’s not f–king funny when you guys do that.”

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3. Decision To Leave

In the end, Lauren left the show after season five and after a lot of hard decision-making when she realized how tough the “reality star” life had been on her. She admitted it took her a “really long time” to come to the decision and added, “It wasn’t like one day I woke up and was like, ‘I’m out!’ I took a really long time to decide when I was going to leave the show. It was hard on my relationships, it was hard on me, so that was when I knew it was time to go, when my heart wasn’t in it and I wasn’t living the kind of life that made me happy. I’d lived my life that way for five or six years so it was scary.”  Surprisingly, she did state, “Knowing what I know now, looking back, I would absolutely do it again.”

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2. William Tell Has Never Seen It

Now, Lauren is far away from her career as a reality star and is two years into her marriage with William Tell, and Lauren admitted he hasn’t seen one episode of the series, but he did see one scene. “We were at a hotel and he was flipping the channels and he was like, ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Of all the scenes for him to pick, it was like, us in a club, and I flip around and I’m like, ‘I’m at the Roosevelt pool every Saturday!'” That was enough for William who said, “I don’t want to know that you!” He also admitted he “hated” being in front of the cameras for the special and doesn’t think he and Lauren would have made it if he had to film for The Hills.

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1. Breaking Up With Jason Whaler

Last but certainly not least was the bombshell Lauren dropped about her breakup with one time boyfriend Jason Wahler. At the time of the breakup, Lauren kicked Wahler out and changed the locks after he had left; however, there was a lot going on with Jason that MTV never showed. He was already battling a drinking problem and, when he returned for a post-split talk, the conversation that took place between him and Lauren was never aired. Wahler was already drunk and when Lauren called him out on it, he looked at the cameras and said, “Don’t say this right now.” On the special, Lauren still got emotional thinking about it saying, “What made it harder was I could see he wasn’t sober. And I think that just really broke me. I felt a responsibility to take care of him and I felt like when we broke up I was abandoning him. There was a lot of nights I was getting 2 a.m. calls and I had to go pick him up passed out in a club.” Thankfully after a battle with substance abuse as well and multiple arrests, Wahler got clean and has opened his own men’s sober living home in Laguna Beach.