Marissa Cooper (and Mischa Barton’s career) died.

#neverforget

popculturediedin2009:

Paris and Kim in Germany, September 2006

Today, Naomi Campbell turns 46! In 2005, Naomi celebrated her 35th birthday in Cannes. The party also served as a gala to raise money for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund:

Naomi arrived with her ex-boyfriend, businessman Flavio Briatore:

And some of the guests included Don Johnson:

Benicio del Toro & Clive Owen:

Ivana Trump

Estelle

Rose McGowan

Victoria Silvstedt & Kid Rock

Penelope Cruz

John Galliano

Robert Rodriguez

Eva Herzigova

and Mary-Kate & Ashley!

Happy Birthday Naomi!

Hey guys! Spencer Pratt is letting me interview him, so I’m wondering if any of you Hills fans had any burning questions about the show, or him and Heidi, that he already hasn’t talked about in the past?

Nicole Richie out with Spencer Pratt & Brody Jenner, August 2006

Ten years ago, someone tried to make a real-life Gossip Girl - this is what happened.

2006, they said, was the year of the socialite - “they” being the creators of Socialite Rank, a real-life Gossip Girl that documented the comings & goings of Manhattan’s latest batch of rich girls.

But it was far from being just another web PR-haven, rather, it was a high society ’Hot or Not’, with each couple of weeks welcoming a new ranking of the Top 25 socialites du jour.

But money wasn’t all you needed, instead, you needed to be the full package, which included:

1).Personal Styles & Designer Relations (1-20 pts)

2).Press Coverage in Major Publications & Gossip Columns (10 pts)

3).Appearances & Commitments to Events (10 pts)

4).Hot Factor - What makes each of the individuals sizzle with personality (10 pts)

And if you didn’t have it all, consider yourself dunzo - or, if you were lucky enough, you could squeeze into their “Don’t kill yourself, you almost made it,” an equivalent to Billboard’s Bubbling Under.

But with such strict requirements, could anybody be the ideal socialite? The answer is yes, look no further than the site’s 2006 ’Socialite of the Year’: Tinsley Mortimer.

From Day One, the site doubled as a hellish pit of narcissism & bitchery, and as a shrine to Tinsley Mortimer - a Virginia-born socialite who married into the uber-wealthy Mortimer family in 2002. Her popularity grew throughout the early-00s as she livened up the Manhattan social scene with her bright Eolise-inspired attire and Hilton-lite personality, and soon she was even walking runways alongside it-girls like Nicky & Bijou. She even designed a handbag line for Samantha Thavasa, which was so big in Japan that her face was plastered all over billboards in Tokyo.

While the Mortimer elders were far from approving of Tinsley’s avid search for publicity, the 10021 was charmed - especially Socialite Rank.

Following Tinsley at No. 2, and sometimes even swiping the top spot from her, was Fabioloa Beracasa, daughter of Veronica Hearst & armed with a Karl Lagerfeld internship & stint at Christian Dior under her belt. Her and BFF Tinz dominated the NYC social scene and could be spotted together at every gala, premiere, and Fashion Week show throughout the mid-00s.

Other society fixtures who found themselves ranking impressively high were Patty Hearst’s daughter Lydia, & cousin Amanda, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, socialite-turned-designer Tory Burch, fashion-house heiress Margherita Missoni, jewelry designer Zani Gugelmann, fashion it-girl Genevieve Jones, cosmetics heiress Olivia Chantecaille, Damon Dash’s wife Rachel Roy, and bottled-water heiress Lauren Davis (now Santo Domingo) - who was so outraged by the site that she allegedly tried to hire a private investigator to expose the catty anonymous bloggers.

In the months following SR’s April 2006 debut, the media, too, started to pick up on the socialite craze. With the ’firecrotch’-laden brawling between Hilton & Lohan raging on in Hollywood, it seemed only logical to pick up on the glamour - and drama - of the girls who hadn’t yet made it to the paparazzi hub. By the end of the year, VH1 was developing an episode of The Fabulous Life Of… on New York’s glamour girls, and channels like MTV and E! were in talks to give SR’s elite - Tinsley & co. - their own reality shows!

As the popularity of the site grew, the socialites’ own fixation with it became unbreakable. When the sites’ creators asked for the girls to fill out a brief profile on themselves, nearly everybody returned the favor.

Lydia Hearst, especially, was rumored to have sent dozens of emails campaigning for herself in hopes of raising her fortnight ranking. But with everybody watching, paranoia grew.

The website’s bio read: “Next time you think about skipping that certain gala, wearing that unknown designer, dating some weird band member, beware. We’re watching. And your ranking is on the line!”

Distrust spread among the social elite as many feared something they’d say - even to a friend in confidence - would end up on the internet burnbook the following day, with a pack of ruthless commenters ripping them to shreds. The insanity of it all was soon heightened by the tale of one unlucky girl, an ambitious 20-year-old debutante who had begun catching the eyes of the gala circuit and Patrick McMullan: Olivia Palermo.

Olivia was a New School student whose rise began simultaneously with Socialite Rank’s. In the spring of 2006, she started making gala appearances alongside her friend, and fellow SR fixture, Byrdie Bell. But as Olivia’s popularity grew, high society retaliated. SR led the backlash by accusing her of being a social climber (~gasp~) and vying for Tinsley’s coveted spot in Manhattan’s hierarchy.

By early 2007, the virtual shaming of Olivia had reached an all-time high. When she sent out invitations to her Marquee-set 21st birthday bash - in a very Carrie move - the website parodied it by plastering Olivia’s likeness on a can of tuna, with a scathing question for its readers: “Is she a packaged can of tuna, a Chicken of the Sea?”

But the fishy diss wouldn’t hold a candle to what would happen next.

While many gossip hounds would’ve been busy catching up on the Anna Nicole paternity battle, or the daily Britney shenanigans, on March 27, SR readers received a scandalous blessing of Jamie-Lynn-pregnancy proportions. Earlier that day, the keyboard fiends behind the site received a letter, forwarded to them by not just one, but multiple people - a letter from none other than Olivia Palermo. Without hesitation, the SR team decided to share the gift sitting in their inbox with the world. Here’s the original post, screencapped/preserved by me for the sake of pseudo-celebrity history:

The story goes that the letter was sent to 70 socialites from an email supposedly belonging to Olivia. Immediately after it was published, however, Olivia declared that she never wrote it and that someone had impersonated her in hopes of besmirching her already negative reputation. As word spread of the desperate social plea, fellow Manhattanites labeled Olivia “white trash” and a “freak.” Quickly, she called daddy on her Blackberry and demanded that the family lawyer get their ass on the case and expose whoever wrote the ‘Scarlett Letter’ (as SR called it).

But the other socialites around town weren’t so sure it was a fake. Many theorized that Olivia wrote it, knowing it would get published, in hopes of scoring some much-needed sympathy points for herself in the press. Tinsley believed this too, and when the two girls had an encounter at a fashion show the following week, a Page Six report claimed an enraged Tinz elbowed Liv to the ground. SR, of course, praised Tinsley’s attack, but the act of it-girl warfare would be the site’s last bit of excitement.

On April 26th, 2007, a year after Socialite Rank had been founded, it was gone. The anonymous bloggers left a farewell message, promising a book titled The Year of the Rank, and a brief outline of the buzz the site had created since its inception, including dozens of interview requests (even one from Tyra - #bless her dedication to gossip), and reality show offers.

Many had speculated about the bloggers’ identities, some suggested it was Derek Blasberg, others Patrick McMullan, and some even suggested it was Tinsley’s brother-in-law Peter Davis. But a week after the site’s demise, New York Magazine outed - in its classic profile of the SR saga (which is 1,000,000x juicier than this lame post, READ IT!!) - that the bloggers were Russian socialite step-siblings Olga Rei and Valentine Uhovski.

Ten years after its creation, let’s take a look at where the site’s creators, and the many socialites they targeted, are now.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

(WARNING: Pictures of physical abuse are in the first section)

Tinsley Mortimer

Grab a box of tissues and start blasting Lucky by Brit Brit since you’re about to read a downward spiral.

The tale of Tinsley starts in her teenage years. While attending Lawrenceville, the Richmond native (and alleged descendant of Thomas Jefferson) met, and fell madly in love, with Topper Mortimer, a Standard Oil heir. The two became inseparable and eloped when they were only 18, but when his parents caught word of the union they shipped him off to the Dominican Republic to have it annulled.

But the annulment didn’t discourage the two; when Topper moved to New York to attend NYU, Tinsley took up refuge in Columbia. And in 2002, with their parents’ approval, they married again - and thus a society power couple was born.

During her early years in Manhattan, Tinsley had bounced from job to job. A beauty assistant at Vogue, an events planner, and eventually PR - but nothing enchanted her more than the idea of becoming a socialite.

A few committee positions later, and a borrowed dress or two, Tinz was on her way to becoming a New York it-girl. While most of her peers were much more demure, Tinz had a vibrancy to her. Her bright outfits, blonde hair, and carefree attitude slowly transformed her into Manhattan’s much-less scandalous answer to Paris Hilton.

By 2006, she was sitting front row at every fashion show, her comings & goings dutifully documented by Page Six, and SR crowned her ’Socialite of the Year’ - to which she responded by sending them a kind email of appreciation.

By 2008, she’d become Dior’s beauty ambassador, and a casting call hit the web for a reality show called “Society Girls” that many speculated was Tinsley’s TV debut. But a few months later, the project was scrapped and a source told Page Six that MTV “couldn’t use any of [the footage]. It’s collecting dust. She looked good but she just got dressed and went to parties everyday and didn’t have anything interesting to say.”

It would take a couple of years before Tinz got another chance at her own show, but in the meantime she appeared on Gossip Girl& made a cameo on Bravo’s Project Runway ripoff The Fashion Show:

As her fame grew, though, her marriage began to crumble. Topper told the New York Times in 2007:

“It’s not necessarily the type of goal that anybody should strive for, going out every night for the sake of self-promotion and getting their pictures taken.”

In early 2009, reports surfaced that the two had separated, the reasons being her love for attention - and his alleged affairs. For nearly two months, Tinz vanished from the spotlight, her visage stopped appearing on Patrick McMullan, and many speculated it was truly the end for society’s golden couple.

But finally she resurfaced - in the arms of Topper & life seemed worth living for a fleeting moment in time, but the reunion was short-lived. Tinsley began filming a pilot for her own reality show on The CW, and Topper couldn’t take anymore, so the two split for good and she ran off with a German prince named Casimir.

After a few months in Europe, she returned to New York to continue production on Empire State (which would later be called 'High Society’), but ran into a massive problem - none of her socialite friends wanted to be on it. Producers ended up paying randoms to play Tinz’s BFFs on the show.

When High Society aired in 2010, Tinsley’s it-girl status was demolished in one fatal blow. Between one of her costars casually admitting to using the N-word, to a load of staged catfights with Devorah Rose, Tinsley had reached Jersey Shore levels of desperation, and society shunned her as a result.

With her reputation in flames, Tinsley pulled a L.A. Candy and released a thinly-veiled novel about her experiences in society titled Southern Charm in 2012.

After a brief promo tour, she fled New York for Palm Beach where she sunk deep into alcoholism, struggled with an eating disorder, and embarked on a secretive relationship with Nico Fanjul, son of sugar baron Alexander Fanjul. The two kept their affair confined to late-night hookups at his home, due to his family’s disapproval of Tinz.

The relationship, though, was far from healthy. The first police report on the couple dates back to Christmas Day 2013. Tinsley was hospitalized that night for a “possible battery” that ended up requiring three staples in the back of her head. She told police she tripped and fell.

On New Year’s Eve, police were called again to Nico’s home, this time Tinsley had locked herself in his bedroom and cried that she was scared of him. After determining that she was drunk, the officers let her off with a trespass warning. The following day she came clean to police about her abuse, but refused to press charges due to Nico’s billionaire family’s hold over Palm Beach.

The following June, police were called to the home once again - this time Tinsley was found drunk & crying next to her mother’s car. She told police that she & Nico had gotten into an argument and he tried to smother her with a pillow. Nico chased her outside before keying her car, ripping off the windshield wipers, and the proceeding to break the windshield. When police looked inside the bedroom, they found blood stains on the pillow.

That December, police were called yet again, this time a neighbor reported seeing Nico tackle Tinsley and shove her head into the pavement. The most recent incident, however, was the first to make headlines. Last month, Tinsley was arrested for trespassing after she was found drunk & screaming outside Nico’s home, claiming he was in there with another woman.

Once her mugshot surfaced and stories of the abuse were finally made public, Nico’s mother claimed that Tinsley was a compulsive liar who was bitter Nico had left her, & threatened: “She’s going up against us, and she’s going down.”

Despite the threats, Tinsley recently told Page Six: “I don’t regret any of the decisions made. The one regret I have is that I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for as long as I did.”

Since her arrest, Tinsley’s returned to Instagram:

And she continues to work on her line for Pop Culture Living:

Hang in there Tinz! We’re rooting for you!

Olivia Palermo (or as Spencer Pratt says: “Palmero”)

While her former foe Tinsley has fallen from grace, since Socialite Rank’s demise Olivia has made the transition from Carrie White to Carrie Bradshaw.

As a child, Olivia attended the prestigious Nightingale-Bamford in New York, before returning to her birthplace of Connecticut to finish schooling.

Afterwards she started attending media classes at The New School (where she did nothing but sit and text) and interned at society magazine Quest. While interning, she was photographed at a charity auction by famed society photographer Patrick McMullan, and we all know what happened next!

Once SR shut down and she’d been left nailed to a virtual crucifix, things didn’t pick up for Liv. In August 2007, reports surfaced that her real estate developer dad had filed for bankruptcy. It wasn’t long after that she started blogging for Paper and rumors swirled that she was going to be part of the cast for Whitney Port’s Hills spinoff The City - rumors that she quickly shut down, claiming that she wanted to be a “serious actress.”

But a few months later the first promo for The City had been released and everybody realized Liv had been lying through her teeth the whole time. Shocking!

After its premiere, Liv’s presence in the gossip columns grew - and so did her family’s! Her cousin, and fellow City star Nevan, was exposed by Page Six in 2009 as a junkie who offered a prostitute oxy in exchange for a blow job. And it wasn’t his first offense either, it turns out he had a string of awry traffic stops, drug busts, and unpaid bills over the years - isn’t the Palermo clan classy?

But even as her dirty laundry was aired out in the press, she still held out hope that The City was just a stepping stone to a serious acting career, or “like, a jewelry line.” She explained that her commitment to reality TV was “a learning process,” and when news hit she was sticking around for another season, she explained that once she starts something, she doesn’t “stop in the middle of it’” - an inspiration to us all tbh.

Thanks to her icy demeanor and ability to make her costar Erin seethe (honestly the best part of the show), she became one of the most-searched names on New York Social Diary and other society websites, and most people tuned into the show just to hate-watch her as she bounced from fake fashion job (Diane von Furstenberg) to fake fashion job (Elle).

And while the serious acting thing never happened, she did sign to Wilhelmina to do some modeling alongside her boyfriend Johannes Huebl - whom she started dating in '08 after a split with Izzy Gold designer Brad Leinhardt earlier that year:

In 2014, the couple announced they were engaged in this hilariously over-the-top Insta video:

And that summer they got married!

Since The City went off the air, Olivia’s also followed through on her promises of designing a jewelry line:

And in 2011 she launched her own lifestyle blog (which I look at more often than I should). She’s also appeared as a guest judge on Project Runway and Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model. Nowadays, she travels the world, goes to fashion shows, and looks stylish with her husband, all the while her one-time socialite peers have become irrelevant.

It looks like things worked out for Liv after all!

Lydia & Amanda Hearst

It goes without saying that the Hearst family had long-dominated headlines before the arrival of Lydia & Amanda. Lydia’s mom, Patty Hearst, was a media sensation - for reasons I’m sure you’re all familiar with - and Patty’s sister Anne, Amanda’s mother, was another prominent society girl who ran into a little trouble of her own. In the '70s she got busted for meth possession and served several months’ probation.

Despite their parents’ wild pasts, the girls had a relatively quiet upbringing. After high school, both Lydia & Amanda both decided to pursue modeling careers, but while Amanda kept a low-profile, Lydia didn’t shy away from the spotlight.

After scoring a cover for Vogue Italia in 2004, Lydia quickly became a favorite of designers & photographers. She was a Heatherette regular, walking for their fashion week shows alongside Paris Hilton & Naomi Campbell:

And she was even dating Heatherette designer Traver’s brother, Matt Rains, for a hot second:

She also caught the eye of Page Six, even scoring a job as a columnist for its short-lived magazine where she talked about everything from the difference between an “heiress” and a “socialite” (according to her, socialites are women who marry into money), how she’s so much better than Paris, or how her and her friends put together a Warhol-inspired “Factory 2.0”:

And a picture of “Factory 2.0”, since I know you’re dying to see it:

But in 2008 she quit her writing position after they published a column, claiming to be written by her, criticizing the Hearst company’s decision to host parties during a recession. Page Six quickly countered her outrage by exposing her writing process: she would send her drunken rambling to a reporter via email and they’d organize them into cohesive paragraphs.

After her resignation, she went back to dining at Butter with Michelle Trachtenberg, making out with Aubrey O'Day for press, posing naked in ’tasteful’ magazines & appearing in random music videos.

And who can forget her delightfully wooden cameo on Gossip Girl?

She also went through a string of famous men around that time, from porcupine-haired ex-Simpson/Patridge/Tess Taylor boytoy Ryan Cabrera, to the less drugged-up Olsen Twin’s ex Justin Bartha (He allegedly screamed at Lydia at an Oscar party shortly after their breakup - calling her a “bitch”), Mischa Barton’s large-balled ex Cisco Adler (NSFW!!!), and even Jared Leto! I feel like I got an STD from just writing that last sentence.

After a brief internship for Blackbook, she got tired of Manhattan and decided to fly out to L.A. to pursue acting, claiming her childhood memories of John Waters’ film sets inspired her to pursue a career in movies.

Once she touched down in Cali, one of her first rumored film roles was a leading part in a Lindsay Lohan biopic. She immediately released a statement, though, that the rumor couldn’t be farther from the truth (and Dina threatened to sue, so I’m sure that helped kill the project). While she waited to find her big break, she struck up a romance with Jeff Goldblum, who was 32 years her senior (her family was not fond of the pairing):

After a year, the two parted ways and Lydia decided to send Tumblr into a tizzy by rebounding with that alien Benedict Cumwhatever:

But thankfully she cured her temporary blindness and moved onto someone with more humanlike features, Nicky Hilton’s ex Kevin Connolly:

And after another yearlong romance, she was back on the market - but didn’t skip a beat before romancing TV host/actor/writer/producer/guy Chris Hardwick:

(He was on Zoey 101 once, I can’t believe I remember this).

After a few overnight stays at the Hearst Castle & some joint TV appearances, the lovebirds announced they were engaged:

And I think I read in a recent Us Weekly that they’re aiming for a summer wedding with a possible ’horror’ theme - you know I’ll keep you guys updated! Their save the date card was a recreation of a scene from The Walking Dead - how romantic:

As for recent TV/movie roles, Lydia appeared in Cabin Fever 3 a couple of years ago, and she was a coach on The Face alongside Naomi Campbell and Anne V:

Amanda, on the other hand, was much quieter than her cousin. While she modeled for brands like Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, she attended college at Fordham, and refused to do any TV appearances like her socialite pals, claiming that rarely anybody comes off well on TV.

And unlike Lydia, her dating history has been a lot less colorful. Aside from canoodling with Chace Crawford at a party once in 2008, her dating choices haven’t really attracted the eyes of gossip columns. For a while she dated Lauren Santo Domingo’s brother-in-law Alejandro:

And after him she dated jewelry heir Luis Medina:

Job-wise, she interned at Spanish Cosmo for a minute before she scored a job as associate market editor of Marie Claire - owned by the family of course.

But her main passion these days is fighting puppy mills, alongside her team of super socialites (Fabiola, Nicky, Georgina Bloomberg, etc.):

Arden Wohl

Arden frequently ranked in SR’s Top 25, and many suspected that she enlisted her friends to write nice things about her in the site’s catty comment section, I mean, it’s all speculative, but with gems like: “She’s the only original thing out there”, “She has eyes with beautiful large lids which are a makeup artist’s dream”, and - the most cringeworthy - “She has a Warholian-like quality,” I’m sure she gave them a little coaching. Funny considering how she told a reporter she’d rather die than be lumped in with the Palermo set: “People have been telling me that I should get a publicist. I’m like, who am I, one of those girls? I hate those girls.”

Anyways, time for a little backstory on the headband-loving socialite: Arden’s claim to fame is being a Manhattan real estate heiress, and her sister once shoved her sober coach down a flight of stairs #LittleHeiressThings. Arden’s dad is a real-estate mogul, and her mom Denise, an ex-Marvel & DC employee, created a comic book series in 2007 called Seven, about fashionable Kabbalah-loving superheroes.

As for Arden, she graduated from NYU with a film degree, but she’s done nothing with it since, except brag about being besties with Sean Lennon, & Leelee Sobieski (who she founded the Art Production Fun Lab with).

In 2008, she got arrested in East Hampton for writing “Ralphy Lip-shits” in lipstick on a Ralph Lauren store (His real name is Ralph Lifshitz), and before cops arrived she tried snatching a few hand-held American flags that the store had on display for decoration.

*Not an actual picture of the arrest*

Since then she briefly attended the French Culinary Institute from 2009-2010, and had plans to start her own catering business, but these days Arden’s doing what any other socialite with zero aspirations does: fashion!

In 2014, Arden launched a vegan shoe-line, Cri De Coeur!

And for those wondering if she still wears headbands:

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote of hers:

“But you know, it just depresses me: Some girl named Peaches who lives in the Bronx—I don’t what she does—looks at this world and says, 'Oh wow.’ And I would never want to give off something that is an illusion, because you hurt people that way. And they’re already struggling so much—the people.”

I love people with no self-awareness!

Lauren Davis

Lauren was another semi-permanent sight in SR’s Top 25. Her claim to pointless fame is being the Poland Spring water bottle heiress, in addition to a short-lived stint at Network PR (I guess all socialites start out in PR?).

Eventually she just settled on Vogue like her other wealthy gal pals. She started off as a fashion assistant, and now she works as a contributing editor.

In 2008, she married beer heir Andres Santo Domingo in a Colombian wedding-extravaganza that Vogue called “the wedding of the year” in its March '08 issue. It even scored a whopping ten-page spread photographed by Gumby Elgort’s dad Arthur!

All of her socialite besties were in attendance, from the Tinz to Fabiola:

Nowadays she does what most other socialites do in the post-recession era, pose for obnoxious Insta pics with Derek Blasberg and show up to a charity event every now & then. In 2010 she launched the fashion retail site Moda Operandi:

And since then she’s caught the eye of Page Six on occasion, well, her family that is. In 2011, her hubby was busted for hitting someone with his Mercedes (accidentally, of course!) and scored a sweet $100 million lawsuit to go with it, and most recently, the couple tried to throw an engagement party for Andres’ brother in Colombia, but nobody showed up because guests were scared they’d catch Zika.

Fabiola Beracasa

If high society was Hollywood, Fabiola would’ve been the Nicole to Tinsley’s Paris.

A frequent Top 5-er & gossip column favorite, Fabiola’s stake in the society game came from being the daughter of Veronica Hearst (a Hearst by marriage). She attended boarding school in Switzerland, went to Boston College, and interned at Chanel’s Paris studio for several years. Yeah, the average childhood - nothing special.

Eventually, she decided to get an actual job. But rather than settling for PR - the standard gig for any rising social fixture - she decided to shake things up and work for a jewelry resale company named Circa, and eventually she became the creative director.

After her stint at Circa, she decided to pick up a job as a reporter for New York Magazine, a camera trailing her as she swayed her way to & from every fashion show and premiere in the 10021.

But just because she was stuck with fluff doesn’t mean she didn’t have a Peabody-worthy moment or two. Read her harrowing account of a 2007 trip to China:

“You felt the oppression there. I had a video camera and, you know, I was told by several of the media people from Fendi to be careful, that I may be questioned about it, and just like, the way the city is - these giant roads, these giant buildings - you feel the oppression! I can’t explain it in so many words, but you feel that people are very cautious about what they say… I’m going back in December for Christmas vacation!”

Katie Couric could never!

Fabi was even in talks to develop a reality TV show circa '08, but the project was scrapped. A shame since it would’ve been the perfect soul sibling to High Society. After all, with gossip items like asking a cop to check out your outfit when they arrived at your home over a noise complaint, or canceling all your social engagements for a week because your Chihuahua was hit by a car, I’m sure Fabiola would’ve been a fine fit for the small screen.

Anyways, around that time she also started dating Deutsche Bank money manager Jason Beckman. The two were inseparable for years, and one year for Halloween they dressed up as Di and Charles, except Fabi was Charles and J was Di - a match made in heaven:

In 2010, Jason put a ring on it while the two were in Cannes, and in 2014 the two married in a headline-making wedding set in Dubrovnik:

Guests included Vanessa Traina, Jessica Hart, Lauren Santo Domingo, and Margherita Missoni. Also, Snoop Dogg and Wyclef Jean performed:

Nowadays, Fabiola co-owns The Hole gallery in New York, in addition to producing a movie or two, like the recent MET Gala docu The First Monday In May. Here’s a recent pic:

Claire Bernard

Claire was a gala staple for quite some time in the mid-00s, rubbing elbows with Tinsley & co. Her dad Lewis served as the Chief Administrative & Financial Officer of Morgan Stanley, while Claire was just an aspiring writer taking classes at Colombia. She was also was rumored to be a little more desperate than the rest of the girls to improve her SR ranking.

Nowadays, she’s the Vice President of the Mariposa Foundation - a group aiming to spread education for girls around the world. She also ran a short-lived blog (only 2 posts) for the Huffington Post, and she’s also worked as a production assistant on a ton of films, ranging from An Inconvenient Truth to Garfield 2. Here’s a semi-recent picture:

Julia Restoin Roitfeld

Julia was born into fashion royalty as her mother, Carine Roitfeld, was the former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris. She was another semi-permanent fixture on SR’s Top 25, although some were surprised she didn’t rank higher.

While she isn’t as scandalous as some of the other girls, she’s definitely been in quite a few magazines as she’s landed campaigns for Tom Ford, H&M, & Lancôme amongst many others.

In 2011, she designed a lingerie line for Kiki de Montparnasse.

And in 2009 she began a long-term relationship with Croation model Robert Konjic.

The two welcomed a daughter together - Romy - in May 2012, but the following year the two split after four years of dating. Now she works as a graphic designer for several brands, in addition to running some motherhood blog/website/whatever.

Camilla Al Fayed

Camilla was a bigger name than most on the gala circuit. Her father, Mohamed Al Fayed, was the owner of Harrods, and her brother Dodi was a casualty of the infamous Princess Di crash. Despite the long family history, she was still able to make a name for herself as she was frequently spotted at clubs with tabloid favorites like Paris, Lindsay, Mischa, & Kimbo Stewart!

In 2006, she interned at British Vogue for a curiously brief four weeks, then rumors swirled she was hooking up with Brandon Davis/Greasy Bear - who reportedly bought a house in London to be closer to her.

But then Camilla had an epiphany. After a friend’s six-day-old baby died, she told a magazine that she wanted to devote her life to charity from that point on, instead of being known as the ’party girl’. The following year, she announced she was pregnant, but refused to name the baby daddy, and continued to maintain a low-profile until 2011 when she decided to purchase a 51% stake in Issa - a clothing brand that had soared in popularity after Kate Middleton started wearing it the previous year.

She continued to work for the brand for several years while raising her children Numair and Luna, but recently she’s turned her back on fashion and decided to open a “plant-based” restaurant called Farmacy in Notting Hill. And by recently, I mean last month.

Here’s a recent picture:

Ali Wise

Ali’s claim to society came from being Dolce & Gabana’s PR director & the girlfriend of hotelier Jason Pomeranc (who runs SoHo’s Sixty Hotel).

But scandal erupted in July 2009 when she was busted for hacking into the voicemail of interior designer & rival socialite Nina Freudenberger!

The story goes that Ali used Spoofcard, which lets you send fake caller ID info with your calls, to bypass the security features on Nina’s voicemail and spy on her from January to March 2008. Why? It turns out Ali cheated on her boyfriend Jason with Nina’s boyfriend Josh Deutch, and when Nina caught word she told Jason (So many names, try to keep up) and he told Ali they were dunzo. An enraged Ali thought the only logical thing to do would be to invade someone’s privacy for the course of months. But it turns out Nina wasn’t her only target! Right after Ali was charged with computer trespassing & eavesdropping, three other victims of her spying came forward, and they all seemed to have one thing in common - they’ve been with Ali’s ex-boyfriends.

But amidst scandal, Ali had her loyal defenders, such as Alice + Olivia founder Stacey Bendet who claimed that what Ali did wasn’t illegal in the slightest and the justice system is totally unfair. Another Ali apologist was Tobey Maguire’s wife, and jewelry designer, Jen Meyer, who claimed Nina was just lime green jello. But Dolce & Gabana didn’t agree with the girls and after the new surge of charges hit Page Six, Ali was given the boot. Lost, angry, and defeated, a fallen Ali decided to find solace in Twitter through such difficult times:

“when all else fails,find the humor in the situation. because really,it’s silly-though painful-how we let our egos get the best of us"Y.Berg

— ali wise (@aliwise) July 27, 2009

And she decided to make a return to the party scene, despite her tattered reputation:

But if we’ve learned anything from Lizzie Grubman, society is very forgiving, and it wasn’t long after the charges surfaced that Ali copped a plea deal which entailed: 2 years of probation, 300 hours of community service, and a $1,000 fine.

Since then she’s continued to make event appearances, work in PR, and now she’s found love with fellow socialite & snowboarder John de Neufville. They have a kid together, too:

Here’s Ali at Nicky Hilton’s wedding last year with Bijou and Sarah Howard:

Alexandra & Theodora Richards

Thanks to the fact their dad is Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards and their mom is Patti Hensen, the Richards sisters were a little more edgy than their socialite counterparts.

They made their fashion debut in 2002 with a Tommy Hiliger campaign, alongside fellow rocker spawn Lizzy Jagger:

And soon after they began covering magazines like Nylon& Elle:

In addition to working the runway for everybody from Heatherette to PPQ:

As the girls’ modeling careers took off, they became staples of the Manhattan social scene & were frequently featured on SR amongst their pals Genevieve and Olivia Palermo.

And they were cool enough to hang with the likes of Cory Kennedy, too!/p>

In 2010, Alexandra posed for French Playboy:

And despite their parents, the girls remained mostly scandal-free, well, until Theodora was arrested in 2011 for scrawling ”T ♥ A“ on the wall of a SoHo nunnery.

When police arrived, they found oxycodone and pot in her purse, causing her to blurt out: ”I hope I don’t get in trouble for this.“

She ended up being sentenced to two days of community service, but her problems didn’t stop there. In 2013, speculation arose over her thin frame:

And last October she checked into Silver Hill Hospital to get clean. She checked out in November, and has been looking much healthier since:

As for Alexandra, the past few years she’s picked up a hobby of DJing:

Byrdie Bell

Byrdie’s society status came from her father, Ted Bell, who was the Creative Director of Young & Rubicam - one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. Her mother also has some ties to the Norwegian royal family. Byrdie’s rise, however, began in 2006 when she started appearing at events with BFF Liv.

Pretty soon she scored a modeling contract with Ford, and started booking movie roles, such as a cameo in Mischa Barton’s 2009 classic Homecoming (See: Horror Movies With Your Tabloid Faves).

By 2007, she was so buzzed about that even Page Six did a profile on her! In it she described herself as the anti-Tinsley, with her interests lying in video games & French porn. Edgy!

Since then, she’s continued to land bit parts in movies, including a cameo in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones docu Shine A Light, & most recently a recurring role in the Bravo series Odd Mom Out:

And while actively auditioning, she stated attending NYU in 2010. She even made the Dean’s List - you go Byrdie!

Picked up my NYU student ID #back2school#matriculated#itsofficial

— Byrdie Bell (@ByrdieBell) September 1, 2010

Here’s a recent picture:

Margherita Missoni

Despite her popularity in New York society, Margherita actually grew up in Italy, near her fashion house-founding grandparents. She moved to New York to attend college at Columbia where she decided to become an actress, while still promoting the family brand of course.

Despite the famous last name, she was only able to land parts in short films:

Shortly after SR was finished, she decided she was finished with New York, too. She moved back to Milan and decided to join the design team of the Missoni brand. In 2011, she got engaged to race car driver Eugenio Amos, and the following year the two married in Brunello:

She designed her own dress, in case any fashionistas reading this post were curious:

And now she has two kids!

Here’s a recent picture:

Zani Gugelmann

Zani’s rise to prominence began when she moved to New York from Connecticut in the early '00s. It wasn’t long before she started scoring modeling gigs, becoming the face of Bill Blass and Judith Leiber.

Around that time she launched a jewelry line - Filigrina by Zani - inspired by her Peruvian roots, and she had quite a few celeb clients too! Take a look at the website:

Anyways, she quickly became BFFs with Tinsley, Ivanka, & the rest:

And now she continues to do what she always did: show up at events, make jewelry, and look stylish:

Here’s a recent picture:

Rachel Roy

Rachel first hit the social scene when she moved to New York to work as a stylist at Rocawear in the early '00s. She quickly rose through the ranks and became creative director of the women’s and children’s divisions by 2004, in addition to meeting future husband Damon Dash.

That year she launched her own label, with backing from Damon. The brand became so popular that by 2008 she sold a 50% share to the Jones Apparel Group (now Nine West Holdings) - who controlled lines like Nine West and Anne Klein. Rachel’s mega-success as a designer made her a favorite of SR and she was a frequent fixture in the exclusive Top 25 from 2006 - 2007.

But with all of the success, she still ran into some financial trouble. In mid-2008, Eastern Savings Bank filed a suit against Rachel & Damon after they failed to make payments on their nearly $80K-a-month mortgage, and later that year things went from bad to worse when Damon’s Chevy Tahoe was seized after failing to make monthly lease payments.

In early 2009, Rachel slapped him with the divorce papers and the two called it quits. She continued to find success in fashion afterwards, and made several TV appearances, from Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model, to fellow SR alum Olivia Palermo’s The City (Sorry Whit, we both know she stole the show).

But in recent years she’s received quite a bit of negative attention after rumors swirled that she was Jay-Z’s other woman. A MET Gala showdown and lyrical diss later, Rachel certainly hasn’t made it easier on herself. On Instagram she recently posted a photo of herself with a caption admitting to being the elusive ”Becky“ mentioned in Beyonce’s Sorry:

Immediately, Beyonce’s fans swarmed the comments - well, the ones that didn’t get lost and stumble upon Rachael Ray and Rachel Zoe’s profiles. But Roy put the rumors to rest with a statement to People:

”I want to put the speculation and rumors to rest. My Instagram post was meant to be fun and lighthearted, it was misunderstood as something other than that. There is no validity to the idea that the song references me personally. There is no truth to the rumors.“

Others have suggested the past month that Rachel is probably on Bey & Jay-Z’s payroll & that this is all some smart publicity stunt to drum up attention and album sales, and most recently news broke that Rachel’s emails were hacked - yikes!

Ivanka Trump

As SR said, 2006 was the year of the socialite - and it was also the year of Ivanka.

As a teen, Ivanka had gained some recognition as a model, walking down runways for Versace & Thierry Mugler, in addition to posing for Elle& Glamour.

She didn’t stick with it, though, and after that her only notable media appearance had been a starring role in the 2003 documentary Born Rich, directed by Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson. The documentary basically focused on a bunch of rich kids saying stupid shit, with Ivanka’s costars including Georgina Bloomberg & Luke Weil.

Afterwards, she graduated from the Wharton School at UPenn and began working for her dad at the Trump Organization, quickly becoming the Vice President of Real Estate Development - obviously because of her hard work.

By 2006, she was even starring alongside her dad on The Apprentice, catapulting her to fame that most of her socialite peers could only dream of. Pretty soon she was scoring magazine covers left and right, and making appearances everywhere from Jay Leno to The View.

And with her newfound celeb status came some celeb boyfriends, such as Lance Armstrong & Topher Grace, whom she was both linked to that year (Her other exes include Greg Hirsch & 'Born Rich’ co-producer James Gubelmann).

But with the wave of newfound fame, she was anxious to distance herself from another headline-making blonde heiress, telling the London Express in 2007 that she’s ”nothing“ like ”party kid“ Paris Hilton, and that she works ”13-hour days“ and even has her own mortgage!

Forget the mortgage Ivanka, the real story is that you paid for a boob and nose job all by yourself! You go girl!

In 2007, she launched her jewelry line The Ivanka Trump Collection and got groped by Andy Dick:

That year she also started dating fellow real estate heir & Observer owner Jared Kusher.

Initially Ivanka told the press that the two were only ”friends,“ well, friends that fly to St. Barts and share hotel rooms together. But by 2008 rumors were swirling that she was converting to Judaism for him. The following summer she announced via Twitter that they got engaged:

That fall they sealed the deal at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, with guests receiving complimentary flip flops with the bride & groom’s names.

2009 also welcomed Ivanka’s own book The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life!

She also tried to start a line of lunch foods at one point. It went as well as you think it would.

But not everything was business in Ivanka’s life. In 2010 she had her very own stalker - Justin Massler.

He often switched between loving her, and completely hating her. He set up an Ivanka fan blog in early 2010, including his own Ivanka poetry and comics:

But on Twitter he showed a completely different side of himself, going on long rants and threatening to ruin her brand:

After recording a video of himself threatening to kill humself in one of Ivanka’s stores, he was jailed for six months. But last November, Justin was busted again, this time for sending an email to Jared’s brother Joshua (who’s dating Karlie Kloss #funfacts).

Aside from that mess, Ivanka’s continued to expand her fashion line. Adding shoes and handbags to her collection, but not without controversy. In 2011, Derek Lam accused Ivanka of stealing one of his shoe designs - you be the judge:

And as recent as a few months ago, another shoe brand - Aquazzura - accused her of stealing one of their designs. No word yet if the company plans on suing. And in more bad fashion news, 20K of Ivanka’s Chinese-manufactured scarves were recently recalled due to being easily flammable. Yikes!

Aside from that, Ivanka’s also been by her father’s side throughout his campaign, even as she was pregnant with her third child. And if you’re wondering her stance on her father’s views, she thinks he’s a total advocate for women.

And probably the most important thing Ivanka’s done this decade was making a cameo on Gossip Girl:

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote of hers:

”I look at my brothers and myself and I’m, like, really proud of that fact that nobody’s a drug addict, nobody’s driving around chasing women, snorting coke.“

Yep, your family’s so much worse.

Jessica Joffe

Jessica started making the rounds in the early '00s. Her father was the publisher/editor of Germany’s Die Zeit& her mother was a writer, so Jessica was considered more of an intellectual compared to her socialite contemporaries.

She graduated from Stanford where she wrote for the Stanford Daily. In one of her pieces, she called Parker Posey ”one of the best actresses of her generation,“ in addition to writing she’s ”beautiful wry, and adequately aloof.“ Funnily enough, a few years later after article was published, Parker’s man dumped her for Jessica.

Yep. Parker’s long-time boyfriend Ryan Adams dumped her for Jess (who had just gotten out of a relationship with Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson). Immediately, Jessica’s fame skyrocketed, and by the end of 2005 she quit her job writing for the Observer and became a regular fixture in Vogue, in addition to being named one of Paper mag’s 'most beautiful people’!

In early 2006, she landed a Banana Republic fragrance campaign, helping her face get plastered all over NYC. She promptly followed it up with a stint doing videos for ShopVogue:

But then she hit a snag. She and Ryan split after 2 years together - he even credited her as having helped him overcome his drug addictions. But alas, by early '08 the couple was finished and he posted a grainy found-footage compilation video - titled ”Sad Days“ - including brief shots of Jess looking all Lana Del Rey:

I’m sure you’re wondering why the couple split in the first place, well, he ~allegedly cheated on her with Mandy Moore - who he started dating not long after closing the curtains on Jess. Ouch! Also, while we’re on this topic, some of Jess’ other exes included Joaquin Phoenix and Elton from Clueless. So random.

Since then, Jessica’s continued to star in artsy fashion campaigns, in addition to a movie cameo here and there (Does 'Saleswoman’ in Celeste & Jesse Forever ring a bell? Probably not), but fashionistas may recognize her best from her recent appearances on E!’s show House of DVF as Diane von Furstenberg’s Style Editor:

And a recent picture:

Annelise Peterson

Annelise was another New York party fixture that started out with an actual job. Originally she worked in banking, then worked as a publicist for Calvin Klein and a PR Director at Valentino in the mid-00s.

Then she began managing a boutique consultancy, Annelise Peterson Inc., while starting to record an album. Her producer said that Annelise had the ability to ”channel a big, black diva a la Gladys Knight or Nell Carter from Gimme a Break.“ Unfortunately, we never got to hear the proof. The one song she was working on, a ballad about masturbation called ”Alone With Me“, was never released. Now she’s the Director of Client Relations at Net-a-Porter, and she also got married and had a kid:

Oh, fun fact - she was the maid of honor at Rachel Uchitel’s first wedding. Yes, that Rachel Uchitel.

Melissa Berkelhammer

Unlike the other girls, Melissa never truly reached socialite status. She was just an aspiring socialite whose psychiatrist dad paid over $2,000 a month for a publicist to get her into parties - all the while Melissa was completely unemployed and pushing 30.

To make things sadder, when she was at parties, photographers didn’t even know who she was. That didn’t stop her hustle though, and by 2006 she was even in the running for a socialite reality show called ’Social’, her competition being Tinsley, Fabiola, Keira Chaplin, & Gillian Hearst. But then she disappeared, well, not missing - she just went back to being completely irrelevant. Years later in 2010, though, she resurfaced - this time with a much sadder outlook on life, resulting from the death of her father:

Worried friends immediately called the police, but after visiting Melissa they claimed everything was fine. She later posted to Facebook: ”I guess it’s a lot easier to 'send someone over’ than actually be a friend.“ The following year, a Page Six story claimed that Melissa had a 2 A.M. meltdown at a Southampton hotel after her mom brought her soups with lumps in it, when she specifically requested no lumps. Her tantrum was so loud that police were called! And if you’re wondering who the fellow hotel guest that tipped off Page Six was…

Kim G from The Real Housewives of New Jersey!

Once the story hit gossip sites, Melissa fired back at Kim, calling her a ”trashy press whore looking for attention.“ And Melissa’s streak of bad luck didn’t end there! In 2014, as she was filming a pilot for a show called Celebrity Buzz With Melissa, she was hit by a car while heading to a nail salon. The accident was so bad that Melissa spent weeks in the hospital, causing her show to be delayed, and then ultimately scrapped.

A couple of months later she hit Page Six again after she and her mom sued Park Central Hotel, claiming a valet swiped $80K in jewelry from their luggage. And the following year, she was featured in the gossip column once again - this time for pulling a Winona at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Reports claimed that Melissa stuffed over $4,000 worth of clothing into her handbag and walked out of the store. When she was stopped by security, she claimed that she was only looking for her mother, who had been in the store with her. When she was taken down to the Midtown North precinct afterwards, she was so distraught that cops classified her as mentally disturbed, and even took the shoelaces off of her sneakers.

During her arraignment, she cried that she would ”never get another job“ (her only job in the past had been blogging for Avenue & The Huffington Post), but not long after she was released, she found work: hostessing at a Japanese steakhouse. But the trainwreck didn’t stop there.

It turns out Melissa & her mother had been squatting in the apartment of actress Julianne Michelle for over a year, initially telling her that their house was being renovated.

~Pictures of the apartment~

After a while, Julianne tried to evict the two, realizing they didn’t plan on moving out anytime soon. She also complained Melissa would sleep in bed all day, hopped up on Xanax, only to wake up at night and scream at her mom. But Julianne’s attempts at evicting the two had proved unsuccessful for a while, causing her to take the case to housing court. Even when the court sided with her, Melissa & her mom refused to move out - until one day they were pretty much forced out, causing Melissa to take her anger to Facebook:

And then she begged for money:

Then her posts started to have suicidal undertones:

And then she straight-up threatened to kill herself:

Eventually she was sentenced to 10 days of community service, thanks to her lawyer Mark Heller, who picked Melissa’s case because she reminded him of another one of his clients: Lindsay Lohan.

Nowadays, Melissa claims she’s found shelter in an Upper East Side apartment, whether or not it belongs to her is a mystery.

Lauren Bush

While Lauren was not nearly as wild as her cousins, she still made her social debut amongst controversy. Lauren first rose to the limelight as a debutante in 2000, and quickly landed covers and campaigns for brands like Tommy Hilfiger & Abercrombie:

Around that time, her parents were going through a nasty divorce chock-full of affairs & messy business deals. Despite the highly-publicized chaos, Lauren quickly became a staple on the fashion scene, interning for Zac Posen alongside Ashley Olsen & hanging with the Hiltons & Hilfigers:

Around that time she started started attending Princeton, & dating Ralph Lauren’s son David (to her family’s disapproval - they didn’t like the age gap one bit!):

At Princeton she came up with the idea for FEED, a bag line with the goal of raising funds for the UN to feed children around the world:

For over a year she was spotted carrying her burlap creation at every soiree imaginable, but once her uncle Dubya fell out of favor, she did too. By 2007 her SR ranking was at an all-time low, and she was quickly slipping into socialite obscurity (which still involves millions of $$ so I wouldn’t shed a tear). The following year she launched another fashion line, dropping the ’Bush’ name and simply calling it ’Lauren Pierce’ - her Britney Jean moment:

In 2011, Lauren and David got married in a western-themed ceremony at the Lauren family’s ranch in Ridgway, Colorado.

Oh yeah, did I mention her married name is now Lauren Bush Lauren?

Anyways, since then she’s continued to work on FEED, which has evolved from the standard burlap sack to stylish backpacks & clutches:

And last November she welcomed a baby boy named James!

Genevieve Jones

The story of Genevieve Jones is a strange one. Unlike the other girls, her ascent to fame was virtually nonexistent. One day she was an unknown, and the next she was everywhere. When she was dubbed ”Girl of the Moment“ in the March '06 issue of Vogue, rumors swirled about her past - some believing she was a high-end call-girl, and others even suggesting she was the one behind SR!

Genevieve was a Baton Rouge native who moved to Manhattan in the late '90s to become a full-time party girl. Pretty soon she became best friends with Zac Posen and started being photographed at club openings and fashion events.

By 2006, she’d become close with fellow socialites Julia Restoin Roitfeld and Fabiola Beracasa, and even became a favorite of then-Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley. As her star rose, the speculation about her past quickly intensified.

But all was revealed in a September 2006 profile in The Wall Street Journal that casually exposed that she had been lying about her age (she claimed she was 27, but documents they dug up proved she was 31), and her family (she claimed mom & dad paid for her lifestyle, her friends said it was married artist Francesco Clemente).

After the article, the buzz around her started to die. While she still kept her socialite pals, her it-girl status faded. She decided to parlay her fashion expertise into a jewelry line in 2008, and began dating Oscar de la Renta’s son Moises.

By 2009 the pair was dunzo, and since then Genevieve’s continued to work on her jewelry line and mingle with rich kids.

Here’s a recent picture of her with Countess LuAnn:

Olivia Chantecaile

While Olivia had Chantecaille cosmetics to her name, she gained more attention as the girlfriend of furniture heir Eric Villency.

The two were regulars at Manhattan events, until he dumped her in 2006 to hook up with Kimberly Guilfoyle, a legal analyst with frequent stints on Fox under her belt.

Rumors swirled that Olivia was so devastated by the split that she even developed anorexia. One December '06 Page Six blind read:

”WHICH rail-thin socialite - who suffered this year when her ex-fiancé quickly married a gorgeous brunette after dumping her - is having health issues? Though her friends beg her to eat, her anorexia has caused the early onset of osteoporosis.“

But it wasn’t long until Olivia found love again! In 2009 she got hitched to hedge funder Warren G. Grady III in St. Bart’s:

And in 2014 she gave birth to a baby girl!

Victoria & Vanessa Traina

Victoria & her sister Vanessa gained notoriety as the spawn of novelist Danielle Steel and ex-husband John Traina. The girls were often referred to as San Francisco’s answer to the Hilton sisters, and they were frequently spotted arm in arm at hot fashion shindigs in the early '00s.

While Vanessa went to college in Malibu, Victoria opted for Parsons and became a SR fixture by 2006, even earning the site’s Chic of the Week award.

But many commenters weren’t as charmed with Vic, often calling her a fugly-wannabe-junkie-whore, and other names fit for a Burn Book.

Nowadays, Victoria continues to lurk Manhattan & LA alongside her sis:

Even weirder, Vanessa’s now married to Mary-Kate Olsen’s ex-boyfriend, millionaire photog Maxwell Snow (descendant of the de Menil clan):

And she launched a ~lifestyle brand called The Line - edgy!!

And they’re part of that Nicole Richie/Erin & Sara Foster/Rachel Zoe clique, too:

Plum Sykes

In the early '90s, Plum worked as a fashion assistant for British Vogue, before moving to New York and scoring a job as a contributing editor for American Vogue. Her stint under Anna Wintour helped solidify her it-girl status, alongside her sister Lucy who became a fashion director for Marie Claire. Plum even joked that the girls were ”Paris & Nicky without the sex tape.“

Eventually Plum ditched Anna to write a thinly-veiled fictional tale of high society life, titled Bergdorf Blondes. Many of the characters were inspired by Plum’s own socialite pals, including a character named Tinsley - an it-girl who can’t hold down a job.

The book was a success, selling a quarter of a million copies worldwide. The following year she got hitched to Toby Rowland, son of businessman 'Tiny’ Rowland:

And then in 2006 she released her second novel, The Debutante Divorcee. A couple of years later she scored to a deal with NBC to pen a sitcom about ”female tycoons“ called Mogulettes, but it failed to be picked up:

Since then she’s published a memoir titled Oxford Girl and spends her time raising her two children, in addition to writing the occasional piece for Vogue:

In 2014, she was embroiled in a mini-controversy, though, after she accused Cara Delewhatever of sleeping through meetings in a Vogue interview. Cara was not happy with such accusations and took to Twitter to defend herself:

Why do people in the industry lie so much???? They would rather see you fail than succeed. What happened to supporting each other

— Cara Delevingne (@Caradelevingne) 25 June 2014

Embarrassing.

Aerin Lauder

Like Olivia Chantecaille, Aerin was another makeup scion. Her grandmother Estée founded Estée Lauder cosmetics, and her father served as the U.S. Ambassador to Austria under Reagan - and once tried to run for mayor of New York, losing out to Giuliani.

Aerin graduated from UPenn before joining the family’s billion dollar business, starting out in product marketing and quickly rising the ranks to senior vice-president and creative director of the company. Under her clearly unbiased direction, she made herself the face of the company’s 2007 fragrance line Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia.

In 2011, she left the company to start her own lifestyle brand, Aerin LLC, armed with furniture, fashion, cosmetics, and even candles!

Since then she’s continued to expand her brand, in addition to posing for Vogue& Bazaar once a year and serving as a MET Gala chairwoman. Here’s a recent picture:

Bee Shaffer

Like Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Bee was also born into fashion royalty - her mother being Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

After a glamorous childhood and mom-appointed Teen Vogue editor position at 17, Bee studied at Columbia. Around that time she started dating fellow SR target Plum Sykes’ brother Fred:

And she also had her sights set on journalism, well, until she decided that it was boring and that the fashion world wasn’t for her. In the 2009 documentary The September Issue, she said people who think ”fashion is life“ are lame and that she’d much rather be a lawyer. So logically she started to search for jobs in theater - with no luck - and settled on being the assistant to College Humor head Ricky Van Veen. Anything to piss off mom I guess.

There she met Fred’s replacement, comedy writer Jake Hurtwitz.

The two were an item for a couple of years while she took a new job as Ryan Murphy’s assistant.

After their split, she moved back to New York where she started working as a segment producer for Seth Meyers, and she briefly romanced film critic Ben Lyons.

Now she’s risen to supervising producer, and continues to appear at fashion shows and the MET Gala with mom:

Oblig:

Dr. Lisa Airan

Unlike the other socialites, Lisa Airan actually had a job (that wasn’t a two-week PR stint or acting as a contributing editor for [insert magazine]). She’s a top New York dermatologist - armed with the coveted Oprah Winfrey seal of approval:

Throughout the mid-00s she was a staple of Vogue’s Best Dressed lists and New York Social Diary, and frequently scored in the Top 10 of SR. She set up shop on Fifth Avenue and her socialite pals were her top clients.

These days she’s married to a plastic surgeon and continues to pop up at all the hot parties:

Here’s a picture of her sitting next to Lilo in Training:

Allison Sarofim

Billionheiress, occasional actress, and full-time plastic surgery addict, Allison was another name that often cracked the SR Top 25. She’s the daughter of Houston investor Fayez Shalaby Sarofim and used to be a popular party girl back in the day.

Her yearly Halloween parties were the talk of the season, with one year’s theme being ”Murakami Anime,“ and another year’s being the ”World of Picasso“:

She’s also had the occasional movie role, you might remember her as a centaur in The Chronicles of Narnia, or ”Eating Disorder Mom“ in The Nanny Diaries. If you don’t, neither do I.

In recent years she’s continued to host her annual Halloween bash, now with the help of her man, furniture designer Stuart Parr:

Last year’s theme was Gustav Klimt:

Helen Schifter

Helen started out as a New York fashion writer in the '90s before marrying then-vice president of LeSportsac & co-creator of Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B line, Tim Schifter. She continued to write for Vogue, and quickly climbed the SR ranks during its short-lived run, thanks to her unending hunger for attention and publicity.

But things didn’t pan out too well for Helen in the long-run. In 2011, she was slapped by fellow socialite Helen Marden, wife of abstract painter Brice Marden, at a Manhattan restaurant after Marden accused Schifter of sleeping with her man. Marden reportedly walked up to Schifter and shouted: ”Are you the whore that’s been fucking my husband?“ After the slap, the entire restaurant burst into applause.

Quickly Schifter issued a statement alongside Tim claiming that she was just Bruce’s ”muse“ and that no affair had taken place, but Bruce quickly countered the statement by admitting he did have sexual relations with that socialite.

Since then, Helen’s continued to work the New York party scene, but with a damaged reputation - and she’s still married to Tim, too:

You can just feel the tension.

Tory Burch

Tory was the blueprint all of the other socialites studied carefully. She’s the living equivalent of that Vine of Naomi Campbell yelling at those models on The Face: ”I have my career… you want what I have!“

Before starting her famed eponymous brand in 2004, she was just another society girl: working PR, attending galas - the typical. But then one day she had a brainstorm, she was going to start her own line (with her loaded husband’s money of course)! An Oprah endorsement later and she was a huge multi-million dollar success!

Her clothes quickly becoming the unofficial uniform of well-to-do housewives across Manhattan, and by 2008 she was named the CFDA accessories designer of the year!

But as her brand took off, her marriage fell apart. In 2006 she split from husband Chris Burch, and didn’t skip a beat before getting back into the dating scene.

She was initially spotted getting cozy with multi-billionaire Ron Perelman, but soon after she hopped into a relationship with Lance Armstrong. The two seemed like the perfect pair, until they split in October 2007 and he moved onto Ashley Olsen.

Since then she’s altered her brand’s image to appeal more to middle America, meanwhile she flies first class and tosses her kids in coach. She also briefly dated music exec Lyor Cohen, before settling on LVMH Fashion Group chairman Pierre-Yves Roussel. The two got engaged this year!

Also, like any true Manhattan social icon, she’s appeared on Gossip Girl.

#classic

Olga Rei & Valentine Uhovski

When it was revealed that Olga & Valentine had been the masterminds behind the site, some were shocked, and others felt vindicated - the occasional broken English tipped them off.

The step-siblings grew up as child stars in Russia, before moving to New York where they attended La Guardia High. After graduating, Valentine scored a job as a Fashion Week Daily reporter, helping him and sis Olga slide in & out of all the hot parties where they carefully studied their soon-to-be targets.

Shortly before the 2006 MET Gala they came up with the idea for SR, and the rest is history. Even as they ran the site, they didn’t shy away from the social scene. Their 2006 Halloween party was even attended by all of their top targets, from Lydia Hearst to Arden Wohl:

After the big reveal, the duo went on to partake in other web ventures. In 2008, they started an astrology website called Astro Crack, where Olga would post under the pseudonyms ”Lula“ and ”Luca“ and make guesses about TV characters’ astrology signs & other fun stuff - according to her, Blair Waldorf is a Scorpio because, ”she wants to be loved, but she loves to torture others with a sweet smile“:

After that, the duo created Art Ruby, a web journal dedicated to scouting new talent & art events around the world. Aside from their group projects, Valentine’s plowed through several side jobs - such as reporting for The Wall Street Journal and working as an editor for Interview’s Russian & German magazines. Currently he’s Tumblr’s ”Fashion Evangelist“ (that’s his actual title), where he links brands with the site.

And in a Clueless twist, the former step-siblings are now married! Cher Horowitz’s #Impact:

As for the infamous Palermo peace offering, Olga told New York Magazine in 2007: “We’re being honest. We did not write the Olivia letter. But whoever did it, they are even smarter than us.”

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Hope you guys enjoyed the post! We’re all rooting for you Tinz! Here are some of my other Where Are They Now posts:

- Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive

- 8th & Ocean

- NYC Prep

- Flavor of Love

- MTV’s Rich Girls

- The God Warrior

Shoutout to furhag for gifs!

StarSeptember 24, 2007

popculturediedin2009:

Mary-Kate Olsen buys wine, August 2005

The entire Amber situation breaks my heart since I’ve been a huge fan of hers ever since I saw All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. I’ve been putting together a roundup post on everything that’s happened the past few days - sans TMZ’s victim-blaming write-ups, but Johnny’s career will do just fine after this, that’s the sad reality of it all. If Charlie Sheen can get away with watching child porn & threatening to kill Denise Richards, and still end up getting jobs afterwards, then I doubt anything will happen to Johnny.

A roundup of everything Amber Heard.

(WARNING: Some pictures of abuse are below)

I became an Amber stan years ago when I first saw All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. I was disappointed when she got with Johnny since I always loathed him. For starters, he was approaching 30-years-old when he got with a teenage Winona Ryder in the late ‘80s, and on top of that, he was violent with her too - check out this article from 2010, when Winona was doing promo for Black Swan:

He also had a public outburst back in 1989 when he was arrested for assaulting a security guard in Canada - in addition to a 1994 arrest on charges of criminal mischief after trashing a NYC hotel room, while drunk and fighting then-girlfriend Kate Moss.

A 2010 Kate Moss biography titled Addicted to Love went into some deeper detail about Johnny’s violent behavior when he’s drinking:

In 1999, he was arrested yet again for violence - that time for brawling with paparazzi outside a London restaurant:

I might be missing an incident or two, but you get the gist - he’s always been shit. For years I kept preaching he was an asshole (even a few times on this blog, but I got messages telling me I was wrong), but nobody would listen to me since they were too busy fawning over Tumblr photosets of him and Wino from the '90s - so I’m glad Amber is hanging him out to dry and exposing him for the scum he really is. Here’s a play-by-play of everything that’s gone down so far:

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May 21 After not seeing each other for a month, Johnny assaults Amber while she is on the phone with a friend. He smashes an iPhone on her face and shatters various objects in the apartment with a bottle of wine (Hmm, seems like that violent temper Winona alluded to hasn’t gone away!). Johnny proceeded to grab Amber’s phone, prompting her to scream to the friend: “Call the cops!” The friend called 911 and police came to the residence, but by that time Johnny had already fled and Amber declined to file a report. According to a new People report, a friend from the apartment next to Amber’s overheard the fight, tried to break it up, and now submitted a confirmation of the events during a court hearing today.

WARNING: Pictures of the abuse (1/2/3)

And pictures from the incident:

May 23 Amber files a divorce petition after 15 months of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences. She also requested spousal support and attorney fees to be paid by Johnny, he rejects both via his lawyer Laura Wasser:

May 25 News of the divorce hits gossip sites and Depp’s PR team plants various stories about Amber, the first being that Johnny’s family “hated her” - which sources close to Amber later proved untrue, stating that Amber was the one taking care of Johnny’s mother in the months leading up to her death, and that she was also very close with Johnny’s children Jack and Lily-Rose. Another fake story claimed that Amber was shopping at Tiffany’s hours after the filing, but the picture they used for their story was actually from April:

May 26 A rep for Johnny issues this statement on his behalf:

“Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation and lies about his personal life. Hopefully the dissolution of this short marriage will be resolved quickly.”

May 27 Amber goes to court where she opens about about her abuse, with her lawyer Samantha Spector providing pictures, and states that Johnny offered her money to stay quiet, which she refused. She also states that the latest attack was only one of many beatings, one of which she says she has a video of. On one occasion, she states that during her birthday party last month, Johnny showed up “inebriated and high.” After the guests left, they argued and he threw a bottle of champagne at the wall and a wine glass at her, before grabbing her hair and shoving her on the floor. She also requested a restraining order from Johnny, which the judge granted her.

She told the judge: “During the entirety of our relationship Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me. I enured excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse from Johnny, which has included angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults to me whenever I questioned his authority or disagreed with him. I live in fear that Johnny will return to (our house) unannounced to terrorized me, physically and emotionally.”

Those are all the facts so far. Since then I’ve already seen another attempt by Johnny’s team to save face:

Johnny Depp helps an elderly lady get a hearing aid…as Amber Heard sobs leaving court https://t.co/cYBUWqvbaJpic.twitter.com/b4130uYL3u

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) May 27, 2016

You can tell his PR team literally typed up that tweet. Anyways, the next court hearing is scheduled for late June. Laura Wasser is already trying to claim that Amber is only releasing the evidence of her abuse to con Johnny out of money. I beg you all to avoid clicking any TMZ articles about the divorce, or any website that gives Johnny the benefit of a doubt, since they’re most likely being fed stories from Johnny’s camp. They don’t deserve the page hits. In the meantime, I suggest you all watch Mandy Lane and get acquainted with the talented Miss Heard if you haven’t already! And another reason to love her? She has the coveted Mary-Kate & Ashley seal of approval - in addition to having an appearance on The O.C. under her belt (before she had that CW show 'Hidden Palms’ - remember that?).

Clean him out Amber! You deserve every penny!

Oh, and before I forget: Johnny defends rapists too. I haven’t really kept up with him over the years - since I hate him - so if any of you have any #dirt to add to this post about his violent past, message me! I’ll confine all updates to this post so you guys have a single place to find all the news. I wish Kitson was still alive & kicking since I need a ’Team Amber’ shirt right now.

UPDATES (5/28):

- First thing’s first, everybody is ranting about a photo of Amber taken a day after the May 21st attack, here’s the picture:

People are saying she’s a liar because she’s smiling in it, or because her bruise isn’t visible - well, first of all, her hair is covering the bruised eye, and second of all, she probably put makeup over it, since not everybody is going to pull a Brittny Gastineau and walk around with their bruises on display, it’s common for someone in a situation like Amber’s to feel embarrassed and ashamed and try to hide what happened. Plus, the picture was taken at a BIRTHDAY PARTY. If you were in Amber’s situation, would you walk into a birthday party visibly bruised? No. So let’s stop using that picture as proof of anything.

- Second, Johnny’s ex-wife Lori Anne Allison (they were married from '83 - '85) issued a statement claiming Johnny’s a “soft person” and never hurt her during their relationship - TMZ obviously twisted it into this:

Johnny Depp’s Ex-Wife – He Isn’t a Woman Beater https://t.co/q0F0cA6Ocs

— TMZ (@TMZ) May 28, 2016

One woman’s experiences doesn’t invalidate the experiences of several others. Like I established at the beginning of this post, Amber was not the first woman he abused. Also, notice how TMZ used a picture of him & Vanessa Paradis in their tweet? How much do you think Johnny’s team is paying them? Actually, scratch that, they probably do it for free.

- A PCD2009 reader linked me to pictures of Amber’s petition for a restraining order - of course, this goes into graphic detail:

And the confirmation of events submitted by her friend Raquel, which I mentioned earlier:

And if you feel like infuriating yourself, here’s a list of people who support Johnny, probably because they’re under the delusion that this is 1990 and he hasn’t aged like 2% gas station milk:

- Mickey Rourke (As if anyone should believe whatever incoherent nonsense he spits out)

- Paul Bettany:

known Johnny Depp for years and through several relationships. He’s the sweetest, kindest, gentlest man that I’ve ever known. Just saying.

— Paul Bettany (@Paul_Bettany) May 28, 2016

- Laurie Holden:

I, for one, am going to see Johnny Depp’s new movie. His personal life is just that. Personal. No one knows the real truth so just zip it.

— Laurie Holden (@Laurie_Holden) May 28, 2016

BTW, in case you needed to be reminded, this is what he looks like these days:

popculturediedin2009:

Hilary Duff at the Cosmogirl Born to Lead Awards, November 2005

popculturediedin2009:

Paris’ Myspace comment about her publicist, October 2006

popculturediedin2009:

Nicole Richie’s Memorial Day party invite, 2007

Shirts at Abercrombie, 2005

Paris Hilton and Paris Latsis out in St. Tropez, July 2005

Ten years after The Hills entered our lives, its most infamous cast member spoke to PCD2009 about everything from the staged candids, to the surgeries, and the person who really spread the sex tape rumor.

With it being the 10th anniversary of The Hills, I reached out to its greatest star - Spencer Pratt - for an interview. For nearly two hours last week we chatted on the phone about everything from Heidi’s headline-making music career to The Tape™. While most media outlets are busy getting the same responses about what scenes on the show were fake (let’s face it, pretty much all of them were), I decided to focus more on Speidi’s experiences in the limelight, which happened to be during the peak of modern celebrity obsession. After all, who better to talk about the fame game with than one of pop culture’s most infamous? So grab a drink, start playing some Natasha Bedingfield, and enjoy!

Who was the first celebrity you’ve ever met?

Meryl Streep. My childhood friend was Mamie Gummer and I didn’t realize her mom was famous until later.

Who was the rudest celebrity you’ve met, and the nicest?

Rudest was Tom Brady, nicest was Kanye West.

Was there anybody, celebrity-wise, that inspired Speidi and the phenomenon it became? Fame-game role models, inspirations, etc.?

Definitely Paris Hilton, she was running the media game when we entered, so if it was anything it was definitely Paris - she gets all the credit.

What was your first experience with celebrity/tabloid culture? And by that, I mean before Princes of Malibu, had you ever tried to get on a reality show, or hang out with a celebrity? I remember that photo of you and a wasted Mary-Kate Olsen (circa 2002), and I read you sold it for thousands.

I was always helping with Brody and Nicole Richie, that was the next ’stage’ - that was my next little svengali move, then Nicole did not like what I said in Details Magazine. I was taken out of context, they had been using the word ’bitch’ like it was a ’BFF word,’ so when I said in Details, “We’re going to be American heroes, we’re going to get this skinny bitch to eat!” I was really being genuine. Her and Paris were saying ’bitch’ this, ’bitch’ that, but when you read it in print it’s like “Oh, what an asshole,” but I was really saying “She’s too skinny, we gotta get her to eat, and we’re going to be fucking heroes in America.” That was annoying, because I was being genuine, I really wanted to get Nicole healthy at the time. She did need to eat.

Did Brody actually try to get Nicole to eat?

We definitely went and got like, protein powders, and went to the Malibu Vitamin Bar and loaded up on healthy protein stuff. We were ordering more food than Brody and I eat, so around us she was definitely eating more than she would’ve been eating without us, I can put money on that, and we were definitely always getting Jerry’s Deli delivered over to her condo, so I’d definitely say yes. If you hang out with me, you’re going to gain weight.

When you started appearing on reality TV, were you in it all for the money? Or did you aspire to be famous too, and money was just a bonus?

The fame part was so much fun - when you start going into restaurants and Wolfgang’s eating dinner with you and you’re like, “Oh my god, I was just in college eating Wolfgang pizza and now we’re ordering wine and talking about the smell!” The allure of the actual fame is so much fun, the money’s great, but if you were as famous right now as Lionel Messi, you wouldn’t even need the money ‘cause everyone is trying to buy you things and trying to give you things. The fame is almost more powerful than the money - if you’re loved. I can’t even imagine being loved. But even the hate and negativity was so much fun, since you’re cutting every line and getting all this free stuff and getting paid to go everywhere. I think I used to joke back in summer school when I was, like, 16 - my friends will tell me, I don’t remember this, but they tell me now: “You used to always say you were going to be on the cover of Us Weekly,” so I think I was always claiming I was about to be famous, and that always trips me out. And I already had a cancelled show, Princes of Malibu, so I felt the juice and it had a pull for me, so when we got to The Hills, that was like the mercenaries, just not playing around.

Do you get recognized in public often, and how do people treat you?

Pretty much every single place I go I get recognized, and people are always super positive. If it’s in a place that sells alcohol, everyone always wants to do a shot with me, which kind of gets annoying when I’m trying not to be drunk - which isn’t too often, but there are times I try not to be. But nowadays it’s awesome, there was definitely - back in the heyday - a lot more dirty looks, a lot of middle fingers from cars. Every now and then there was yelling, but nowadays I get a lot of, “You rock!” Most of the people that have actually recognized me say, “You were on that jungle show!” - which is so crazy to me. If I had known I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! was going to be what I was known for, I would have at least tried to stay in the jungle longer.

How did paparazzi find out where you guys were all the time? Did you tip them off/work out a deal?

Since I had already made a partnership with Pacific Coast News to sell those Mary-Kate photos, I had already had that relationship with them, so the second we were having paparazzi following us and taking our photo, I was like, “Woah! They’re selling these photos! I need to call my homebody James over at PCN and let’s get our own guys.” There’s obviously very clear stage-y ones, and James is from England. All the best sales at the time were in England, and in England they like 'em real cheesey - looking at the camera, smiling, doing ridiculous stuff. But we didn’t get that in America, where they’d be reselling also, that everybody would be like, “Oh, they’re so phony!” Which is ironic now because if you look at celebrities today, they smile at the paparazzi and they do all these ridiculous Instagram photos & outfits and they all dress up for Halloween - all the stuff that only Paris Hilton would do. Like I said, Paris was leading, I give her credit. That was only Paris, now it’s every famous person doing what used to be her game. So I think that’s always funny, we were known as ’famewhores,’ but that was just because James was having us do these cheesey over-the-top shots that the British audience loved for their ’rags’ - as they call them over there, I call them beautiful magazines here. So you can tell the difference between what was real and what was staged. We had a 50/50 partnership with [PCN] and we were making over a million dollars selling our paparazzi photos, so you start doing a lot of them and you’re like “This is the best gig ever!” But I mean, if we went to Robertson at the time, which is where Paris and everybody would hang out, those were all real paparazzi; or if we went driving around Hollywood, those were real paparazzi; or if you go on Rodeo, those were real paparazzi. We were stupid famous at the time, we were getting real paparazzi, but we tried to avoid them as much as possible because we wanted to make our own money and sell our own photos. And I learned that game - I won’t name his name - but my good friend is the photo editor at a major magazine and he told me about how Brad & Angelina set-up and partnered with a photo agency to sell their first photos when they were seen on that random beach in Africa when they first started dating. So when I heard that Brad & Angelina did this, I was like “Uhh, why don’t I copy the most famous superstars in the world that are rich & doing this?” So that’s who I jacked the whole ’stage game’ from, once I heard that’s what they did.

And on that topic, how often - from what you’ve seen - are celebrities truly stalked by the paparazzi, versus them complaining about it when they’ve really worked out a deal behind-the-scenes?

Every single one of those ’Who Wore It Better’ in every magazine is a set-up photo with the publicist, with the magazine, with the designer, they are getting paid to wear the dress, the publicist is giving kickbacks to the magazine. Yes, there’s - uh - Kristen Stewart I do not think - 'cause I talked to the guy that took that photo… you know, here’s what’s weird. Kristen Stewart knew they were following her when she kissed that director, she knew the paparazzi were following her. Maybe she thought she lost them, but I talked to that photographer who got the shot and he was like, “Dude, we’ve been sitting at her house all day.” Like, she’s a smart enough girl, and at that time when she had been famous also… there’s always those suspicious moments like - did Rob already cheat on her? Were they already breaking up, and she was like “I’m gonna light this fool up”? Who knows. My point is, even the shots you think are like, “Oh my god!” - these people know that they are getting followed. So maybe they thought they were really crafty and lost them - it’s so hard to lose these photographers, these guys drive like Jason Bourne, you know what I mean? And they switch cars. So, yes, there’s major stars that definitely, like for instance, I know because my sister’s kids go to the same school as Fergie’s kids, and my sister called me and she’s like, “What do I do about these photographers that wait out here for Fergie to pick up her kids?” So, you know, maybe that’s Fergie’s photographer, I don’t know, maybe. I know that, I would guess 90% of famous people, if they’re not in contact with their photographer individually, their publicist is, and they have like, “Yeah! I’m going here, heads up!” - and the publicist emails the photo agency they have. Here’s how you can always figure this out, if you were to take the time to look at certain celebrities, who their photo agencies that always gets their photos, and it seems like this recurring pattern, like, it looks like Kim K always works with Splash - maybe not, I’m throwing that name out there - or like if you saw Heidi & Spencer were always with PCN back in the day. So there are ways to figure out, but then a good publicist maybe works with three different agencies, and don’t have any exclusive deals. That’s why these publicists get paid 5-10k a month, to get these people in magazines. Obviously there’s photos out there that I know people do not want out, and if they did they’re insane. But what I used to think people wouldn’t want out, now what they put on their Snapchat and Instagram makes me question everything - like, you’re just trying to be so relatable with no makeup and looking fat, great, I guess so. The fame is so competitive now that the stakes have definitely changed in what people will do to get posts and mag shots. Short answer, I think that everyone is game, and playing the game as hard as they can. Maybe like, Sean Penn is trying to lose some photographers to go to dinner with a cartel leader, but even then… they got the paparazzi shots of him at the airport in Mexico! So it’s like, c'mon!

I’m assuming the paparazzi industry’s taken a turn since then, how bad is it right now?

Oh yeah, right now it’s in dire straits. Paparazzi agencies are letting go. They used to always have staff photographers that got salaries, and now they’re only using freelancers mainly and only keeping a few people on. The only reason these agencies are afloat is because they sell their backlog of photos - their archives. Now photos that you used to get $2K for are now maybe 300 bucks.

What celebrities did you hang out with on a regular basis back in the day? Who was in your circle that wasn’t on the show?

I only really hung out with Brody. I left college, we did that show together, and then we were like a team. We didn’t have anybody else really, we were just like a team hitting the town together. We had friends like Frankie - who was the guy that ran the clubs; we had Jared, who would buy all the bottles, but we didn’t have any famous people that we would hang out with. One time we did kick it a lot with Michael Buble, which is really funny. It was right when he moved here from Canada, and he was doing his first album with David Foster & David’s studio was at Brody’s Casablanca house, so we were always kicking it with this guy that was just a Canadian bar singer at the time. In reflection, that was the most famous person that we kicked it with.

You guys spent a lot of money and bought a lot of expensive things at the peak of the show’s popularity, do you guys still have all of that? The cars, clothes, etc.?

That was the dumbest thing we ever did. We gave away - easily - two million dollars in clothes, 'cause we were on that whole ’we already wore it once,’ so Heidi would always give her shoes to hair and makeup people after she’d wear them once. She one time gave a whole wardrobe to this store to resell for her and she didn’t even really collect the money because we weren’t worried about reselling clothes, it was just like - do whatever you want. And then I gave all of my clothes to my buddy at the time. I already bought maybe a whole Hermes desk, and chairs, everything that you can have Hermes we pretty much had. We have none of it now, so that’s frustrating. But the reality is, I wouldn’t want Heidi to wear any heels because I only like her to wear tennis shoes and be comfortable, because I heard for years, “Ow my feet!” I never want to hear that again, those shoes are tortuous for women. I don’t even think they look cool. I think sly sneakers or running shoes look way cooler. I hate wearing suits because heat rashes, I get all hot and itchy. I wouldn’t even wear any of this stuff, but it’s frustrating that I can’t just go look at it because I’m just stupid, so it’s annoying. We don’t go to any fancy events or red carpets, though. Heidi one time bought a $7K dress for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and she wore it a second time and Perez Hilton posted, like, ’Heidi Rewears Chloe Dress, Ew!“ - and that totally broke Heidi’s heart, so we were on the whole ’you should never wear things twice’ - which is the dumbest thing on the whole earth. Now we probably couldn’t even wear any of this stuff because it would all be considered vintage now.

What was your daily routine during the height of your fame?

We’d go to Cafe Vida in the Pacific Palisades and I’d get a chicken burrito, yam fries, and an iced tea every single day, and we’d usually go to Don Antonio’s for dinner. We went to a lot of movies, too. Heidi’s the only person that loves going to the movies as much as I do. We went to Cabo a lot also, but we were so busy. We were filming all day everyday - we didn’t have any free time. Any free time we had we would be in the recording studio, which is not a joke. We spent every waking extra minute driving to the Valley and going to Glenwood Studios - shoutout Kit!

How was your salary increased each season? And how often did you get bonuses for coerced scenes? And on that note, were bonuses given on a regular basis to the cast to encourage juicy scenes?

I don’t know about the other cast members, but I’m sure LC was getting bonuses up the wall. Heidi told me, when she was still friends with Lauren, that they would give her gifts of, like, Chanel bags and she saw all this designer stuff. The only gift we ever got from MTV - I’m not even kidding - was a little plastic bubblegum dispenser that said MTV on it that was, like, the size of a baseball. Everyone definitely had different deals. That’s why I was always acting so bananas, because I think we needed to get 6 million viewers to get that ratings bonus, which was at least a $100K bonus. That’s how the Jersey Shore got so rich - they were getting 6 to 8 million viewers, so they were getting ratings bonuses, like, every episode. In our contracts, maybe LC only needed to get 3 million, but I don’t think we ever got a ratings bonus. In Heidi’s first season, she only got paid $1,000 - for the whole season - and she really had to work at Bolthouse all day long & sit there for minimum wage, and they made her pay rent at whatever condo she had. She was totally effed. But that was the deal that LC’s manager & agent had set up for her, which she totally sabotaged. Like, ”Oh thanks, you hooked me up with your agent to get me $1K for 12 episodes on a TV show and I have to pay my own rent and I’m just a broke 17-and-a-half year old from Crested Butte Colorado.“ So when I came along, I was like: ”Yeah, you’re definitely firing LC’s agent, they clearly don’t care about you.“ And then we got a new lawyer - this guy Dan Black, who happened to be the lawyer for the co-executive producer of the show, who was also the executive producer on Princes of Malibu - so that’s how that all connected. So I got him and then the deals started going up. It went from Heidi getting paid $1K for the first season, and getting like $2K an episode on Season 2, to Season 3 - when we started cracking off - it probably went to 20 or 30k an episode, since by Season 6 it was like $125K an episode. But the way they screwed us is they would always say in our deals that we’d get paid more the next season, but what they would do is - instead of adding a new season - they would call it Season 3B and they would add another 12 episodes onto Season 3, when it should’ve stopped at 12, but went to like 25, so the money wouldn’t go up to what it should’ve been going up to, so they had us rigged.

Do you like how the show left out the ’fame’ element? Only briefly was the celebrity status of the cast members alluded to throughout the show - such as Lauren saying her alleged sex tape was being talked about on "blogs.”

Hell no! That was the only problem with the show. They should’ve kept all the music, all the glossy looks, all the editing and cuts and have the shit real. Like Jersey Shore, if it was fake I don’t know, it feels completely real. I watch clips of The Hills and it looks like just a bunch of bad acting from 12 different people - including myself - because they would edit all these weird lines that nobody would say & put it all together in this weird version of what Adam DiVello thought would look like this Melrose Place/Sex And The City script he was plagiarizing from all day long. If you’d add up Brody popping bottles, coming at the paparazzi, and LC covering her face like, “Oh, I don’t like being famous!” - it would’ve been incredible. Heidi and I spending 3 million dollars trying to make her Britney Spears, and every night spending 8 hours in these recording studios with Heidi crying all night long because we couldn’t get the cut right - and these producers all yelling and saying we owed them more money. There was so much more real drama, I don’t even know about everybody else, but I know we had so much real drama and if we wanted to make a reality show why are we not covering it. Okay, I get it, season 1 or 2, people weren’t famous enough, but by season 3 everyone was really famous. The Kardashians do it, and I love when they show paparazzi on the show!

This is random, but I tried reaching out to Max with no response - was that fight with Max Nash, the guy at Heidi’s work, real? I assumed he was a paid actor, since he later appeared on an E! reality show - Pretty Wild - with some members of The Bling Ring.

The producers told him to say that, and I wasn’t about to just let him get to talk shit to me. I was pretty hip to the script. He didn’t work [at Bolthouse], the producers brought him in for that little scene. That was Adam DiVello’s way to try to piss me off, and it worked.

In a 2015 interview with Complex, you said that Kim Kardashian was trying to get on the show, and even filmed a couple of scenes, was there anyone else that was desperate to be on the show?

Well, at first Lo was always desperate to be on the show. Once she realized it was a hit show - at the time her and LC hated each other and beefed out - and then all of a sudden Lo’s coming back out of the woodwork, like, “Hey girl! I’m moving back to Hollywood.” So Lo was the most desperate out of anyone. She came straight like the itsy bitsy spider down the water spout to get back in the game.

How do you honestly feel now that the Kardashian/Jenners are everywhere and filling that same spot Speidi used to have in the media? Do you have any resentment towards them, or do you wish them the best? Do you think they’re playing the 'game’ as well as you and Heidi did? And why do you think they’ve lasted so long?

I’m a huge fan, so it’s definitely frustrating that I’m not getting the huge checks and I’m not stupid famous still, but I definitely love watching the show - and Kim’s snapchat with Kanye is beyond incredible. You know, I would have no problem if I never had to see Kourtney or Khloe ever again, so I could easily do without those two. But Kim, Kendall, Kylie, Caitlyn, Kris, Scott AKA ’Lord’ - they’re phenomenal. I’m from the world where I always got, “What are you even famous for?” So I love when people still get that - “What are they even famous for?” - and make millions of dollars and get to fly around in jets and get the last laugh on haters, so I’m on Team ’Hahaha, they’re famous for being rich, idiots!“ I definitely don’t have any ill will, but obviously if it was between me and them I’d much rather me be famous than them, but I guess that’s obvious. They just have the edge on us 'cause there’s so many of them, so even though you feel like you get sick of hearing about them, it rotates who you’re hearing about. Like one week there’ll be something about Caitlyn, and another week it’ll be about Kylie or Tyga, so they do have the edge, where it was just Heidi and I, so it’s hard to come up with storylines and stunts when there’s just two of you. The equivalent would be Heidi and I playing doubles tennis, and they’re like a football team. There’s just so many more players on the field that it’s hard to compare, but I can’t speak on them since the difference is this: I would love to see their fame game if E! had cancelled their show after six seasons, so that’s the edge. If MTV was still airing The Hills, Heidi and I would be just as famous as them right now. The key is you have to be on TV, and that’s what I didn’t understand back in the day. I thought you could just be in tabloids or just be on social media, that’s what I didn’t understand. Your only fame is because you’re on a network that’s pumping you and putting you out there, so I’d love to see how famous [the Kardashians] are if E! stopped airing the show. Now let’s see what’s up! TV’s the power and that’s what nobody realizes that the networks have been around for ages. The reason Paris and Nicole are famous is because they were on FOX, which at the time was the biggest network there was, that’s why they were famous, they were getting to go on FOX and FOX commercials, but once you get unplugged - yeah you could be in tabloids - but even when tabloids were selling their most at their peak, it’s like a 1,500,000 circulation, where a hit show on FOX has like, 25 million people, and it’s right there on their couch, and it’s usually only 22 minutes or maybe 44 minutes, straight-up getting put on people’s brains versus ’Oh! I just turned that page so fast, there were 8 different celebrities in that Us Weekly” - like how much power does that really hold? That’s definitely the key, being on TV. That’s why all these scripted actors, once they’re not on a scripted show, you forget about them. The only reason why they were famous is because they were in your house for free. But the world’s different now, I’m older, I guess there’s people that are famous from the Internet, but here’s the thing - right now there could be a YouTube star that has, let’s say, 6 billion views - I don’t know how many YouTube people get - but right now if I walked into my coffee shop and that person was in there versus somebody that was on Love & Hip Hop on VH1, I would know who the Love & Hip Hop person that gets only 1 million or 2 million views, versus that 6 billion views on a YouTube channel - the power of actual television, like that’s why people are like “TV’s done! It’s the internet!” It’s like no, that’s not true, the TV will always be more powerful, because - you know - it’s got the ’juice.’ The networks are conglomerates, I can’t even explain it, but TV will always be more powerful than these social media platforms, which is unfortunate for me because I wish I could get more famous on Snapchat than having a FOX show, but that’s not the case.

If you could do it all over again, what would you have done differently?

I would’ve gone way harder. I would’ve done everything that I said about LC. It was true, I would’ve done it in front of paparazzi, and with, like, TMZ cameras in public streets. I would’ve just rolled up on her when she was filming and been like, “Why are you lying about this? Heidi didn’t do this. You’re a fucking liar!” And expose her right there without the power of the whole production team guarding her and making sure that she never came off wrong. I would’ve used the TMZ cameras to get the real truth, and the real story, and if The Hills wanted to follow it, whatever. I shouldn’t have sat back and let them just walk all over us. It’s one thing if you’re going to be the villain for saying all the real things and the truth. It’s another thing to be the villain for all the fake shit I just went along with. I would’ve gone way harder as a villain. I would’ve used the media, but the problem was I would’ve been kicked off the show. If I went and did that in front of their cameras, I think I could’ve pulled it off because it’s like, “What? I did it on the show.” I think I could’ve pulled that off a couple times, that would’ve been huge if I had rolled up on her and been like, “You know what you did, you lying little bitch! Don’t come up and punk my sweet little angel girlfriend!” Heidi’s too sweet, she’s from Crested Butte. Lauren had already played this game for years against Kristin Cavallari - who’s a killer, positive not a negative. Lauren was already a veteran. It’d be like Tom Brady going against some high school quarterback, with all due respect to Heidi. She was just too sweet for what she was up against. She had no idea the stakes, and I shouldn’t have sat back and let her get eaten alive. And Heidi had no money, so she was like, “Whatever. I came from no money, now I can buy dinner.” When I met Heidi, she lived off of top ramen. That’s what I would’ve done - got the real show on camera and make it so they couldn’t edit around it, 'cause if they would’ve edited it all weird, people would’ve seen it on TMZ and been like, “No, he said this, this & this, and the show didn’t show any of that.” When I think back, that’s the only way I could’ve played it legally and got the truth on a camera. Whether or not MTV would go along with it - because they were funding Lauren’s little bootleg clothing line at the time - who knows.

How much of fame is achieved by making calculated steps versus having characteristics that can’t be learned (people who are simply destined to be famous/have that 'it’ factor)? If fame was a recipe, what would be the ingredients?

If you’re going to really play the game right, you still need to have a connect. You’ve got to be on a TV show, if you want real fame you’ve got to be on a TV show or movie. I love YouTube people. I love Vine people, they’re all entertaining, but real fame - if you want to play the game - you need to be on a TV show or in a movie. If you have the best talent in the whole world, you can become famous without a TV show or a movie, but it’s hard especially now. There was a way more mapped-out formula when we did it because there wasn’t all these platforms. Now I feel like it’s easier and harder, because now it’s like you’re competing against the whole world. Everyday somebody’s trying to do something that’s entertaining, and to go viral. Before, only the people that wanted to be famous were trying to do things to be famous. Now my mom is trying to post things to get likes, c'mon, like, you’re competing against my mom! In 2007, there was definitely a formula. Maybe there is now, but I can’t name somebody that got famous just off a hustle, without a TV show or a movie. You better be real confident, with all due respect to my wife, that was the hardest part for her. When she was famous, haters really got to Heidi. Comments really hurt her feelings. It did not phase me. I actually, at the time, embraced it. Now I love rap songs that are like “If you don’t got haters, then you aint poppin’.” You better be self-secure if you want to be famous, everybody wants to take you down, especially once you get famous, then you’re really going to get the heat. So I would say you better be ready for a lot of negativity, and try not to take it personally.

What does it honestly feel like to be famous - or infamous, for that matter? Speidi was everywhere, so what went through your head during all of that? How did you feel each day as you and Heidi were broadcasted on every TV, every tabloid, and ripped apart on every gossip site?

Overwhelming, definitely. Like, there were definitely times I just paid people $200 cash to go down the street to get a burrito because I didn’t want to deal with - whatever. It definitely got to the point where it felt not even worth it. It got to that level where it’s like, this is a nightmare. When there’s super famous people that complain about, like, “being famous is so hard” - well, they do have 80 million dollars. Heidi and I didn’t have 80 million dollars. When you don’t have millions of dollars in the bank and you’re just spending it all, it doesn’t feel worth it. If I had $90 - $100 million, you give me Brad & Angelina money and I don’t know if I’d ever have a problem going to get my burrito. How to describe it? Super weird. It’s just weird when people think they know you, that’s the trippiest thing - that always drives me nuts. My own friends barely know me. So that was always annoying, the judgement of, like, “Ugh, I know exactly what’s he like.” But I get it, I feel like I know people through Snapchat now - now I get how people felt like they knew us. That was only 22 minutes a week and tabloids, but now with Snapchat I swear I’m like, “Oh, I could hang out with somebody and know everything about them and we could get along” - so I get that trippy feeling. Certain times it’s fun, like when we were in England walking on the side of the street and all the garbagemen would always honk at us and shout, “SPEIDI!” - and I’d think it was awesome. Fame is definitely addicting though, it’s definitely a rush.

You guys negotiated covers with tons of tabloids, Us Weekly for example - who proposed the stories? Were you guys tactful and creating your own 'storylines’ or did [insert magazine] create the storyline/angle and you guys just took the money?

In our power, we never got to make the cover lines. We were just taking checks and we’re like, “You can do whatever you want.” If you’re doing an Us Weekly cover with LC for instance, I bet her publicist and LC are literally typing the cover taglines, like “LC Tells All About Her Costars!” These type of things are very strategic: “Okay, she’ll do the cover but she won’t talk about this this or this - and we want to talk about her throwing barbecues with orange peels as the plates,” you know, all that shit. When you have more power, when you’re the narrator, the little Mary Tyler Moore, you’re definitely the one in the driver’s seat. With us, maybe if we had said we wanted to this, but we didn’t even care. It was like “Oh, you’re going to put us on the cover of a magazine, okay, thank you! Great! Use any photo!” Even if I looked fat, go for it.

Did you actually watch The Hills when it was airing? If not, have you watched it since then? Or would you rather just live in total ignorance of how you guys appeared on the show?

I have never watched one whole episode of The Hills. I’ve seen clips whenever Entertainment Tonight does a piece or whatever, but if we watched the show we would’ve quit. We were seeing the reaction and what people were saying. It was out of sight, out of mind. Let’s just take these checks. We didn’t have a choice. When we’d argue we didn’t want to do that, then they’d say, “Okay, well, that’s all we have for you on this episode” - and then you’re not going to get paid. So it was like: “Okay, what was the line?” It’s difficult to play hardball with people that can call your bluff.

Pick One: Les Deux or Hyde.

I never spent that much time at Hyde. Les Deux was probably the most fun, that was like the peak of everything. But I would say Area was more poppin’ for us. When Area first opened it was going off. But I liked Hyde, it was low-key, but I’m going with Les Deux. It did have a top secret floor that only the VIPs could go up to and it was like a whole separate secret hangout that people didn’t know was up there, that was cool I guess - a hidden floor.

What’s up with the flesh-colored beard? Why do you keep it?

The reason it started is when I used to shave and we’d film, they would always say: “Spencer, you’re too shiny.” So they’d always powder me up ‘cause they’d always say I was reflecting because I used to get a facial every week, so my skin was glowing and it was bad for the lights and the camera. So they’d always come in and have Heidi’s makeup artist powder me down, and when they would do that I would get the craziest underground deep zits - like out of a horror movie - and I was breaking out so much. So then once I stopped shaving and opening the pores, my lower chin area wouldn’t break out. Then I was like, “I don’t even care what I look like.” I hate zits more than anyone. So that’s how it started, and then when it became, like, a ‘thing’, I was like, the haters love it - flesh-colored beard - nobody else’s got it! It became like a costume almost. Now I’m growing it out for a show that we’re doing in January - that I can’t tell you the name of - but we’re doing another reality show and I want it to be the longest, wildest, flesh-colored beard to ever be on TV. It’s like a prop. My mom hates it, my dad hates it. Whenever I see them, they come at me with a razor, like: “Please, please trim it!” I love it because now when I train jiu jitsu, my one problem with jiu jitsu is when I touch my cheek against somebody’s dirty kimono and the jiu jitsu mats, I would get these zits again. But now the beard is, like, a shield from getting into my pores. I don’t think like, “Oh! It looks so cool!” I do it because I’d rather look stupid with a beard than look cool with zits. So i was like forget it, I’m going to look like a flesh-colored lumberjack.

Someone asked about your relationship with Heidi, and whether or not you’d consider it unhealthy. I know you’ve seen that “Speidi” documentary, so how do you feel about the way your relationship has been portrayed in the media? Do you think it’s unfairly maligned, or have there been points when you felt you’ve made mistakes?

Well, I think Heidi and I are both so similar, you know, and we both love spending money so much. If one of us had been like, “No, we shouldn’t do this” - we’d probably be in different positions - in that sense, when you’re both chasing similar things like that - that’d be unhealthy, our spending habits are one example.

What’s the status of Heidi’s music career? I remember you set up a page to raise money for new Heidi music last year, how’s that going? Or was that a joke?

Obviously we spent so much money getting those - what I call - ‘hit records,’ because I believe if any one of Heidi’s songs had, like, $70 million of marketing like Lady Gaga’s last album - and that still didn’t even work - like, if you put $70 million behind Body Language or Blackout, or any of these songs… Cathy Dennis, who wrote Toxic for Britney Spears, wrote, like, 4 of them. Those are hits. Unless we had, like I said, someone to sponsor us - one of these conglomerates that make stars - you know, it’s next to impossible. [The GoFundMe] was a joke, I was messing around, but if all of a sudden we got $5 million on there I would’ve been like, “Okay, we’re going back in the studio, we’re recording a hit, and I’m calling Tove Lo to write this shit for us and Max Martin - let’s go!”

Are there unreleased Heidi songs that you plan on releasing someday?

I don’t have access to them, I think her music producer that did Higher - his name is Theron Feemster - he probably has three, that I think that are incredible, that he probably lost because he has so many hard drives. But there are definitely three, in my opinion, smash hits. Theron produced, like, twenty of Michael Jackson’s most recent songs that aren’t even going to come out yet. Michael Jackson had him living in Las Vegas with him doing a secret album. There’s three songs that, Michael Jackson has as the guy he wanted to make his last album, he has three Heidi songs sitting there. I’m still trying to get the Higher files from him to put on Apple Music, but he ignores my texts because he’s still mad that I said that it’s his fault we got so much negativity on the Higher record.

And what’s your favorite Heidi song (other than Body Language since you rapped on that one)?

Probably Blackout because my memory of going to Cabo and filming the music video was so much fun. I don’t know, More is More, that was when I first heard - you know what, no, Fashion - let’s go with Fashion. It’s so annoying that I didn’t screengrab it, but there was this interview that RedOne did right when he was working with Lady Gaga, and he said that he was going to sign Heidi and that she was going to be the biggest star in the world, and they just cut Fashion, and blah blah blah blah. And then - I was there - he gets a screaming phone call from Lady Gaga - who was not Lady Gaga at the time, she was a girl named Stefani who was just a songwriter - and she said “That’s my song!” And he’s like, “You’re a songwriter, I’m a producer. I can put out whatever I want.” And we put [Fashion] out and she had the fashion show on The View and Heidi went along with it, and then we punked out because at the time our music lawyer was the same lawyer as RedOne’s - Peter Lopez - but Peter Lopez called me and he’s like, “Lady Gaga’s now going to be an artist and her label wants that song Fashion for this movie Confessions of a Shopaholic - Spencer, we need to pull that record from you.” And he was my lawyer for Princes of Malibu and he was my homie, so I was like, “Okay.” We should’ve said no, we had the legal right - we had a verbal handshake commitment with the producer - and he had the right to use her lyrics because she signed them off. If we were hard-hitting real Hollywood players, we would’ve battled Lady Gaga and got that song Fashion. I love that track, it was a RedOne banger - and he had just made Just Dance, the only reason Lady Gaga was a star.

Did you start the sex tape rumor? And if so, was the tape real?

It was not a rumor. Jason Wahler was reaching out to TMZ to try and sell it, and I definitely know that other people know this too. And I know for a fact that - Perez can deny it to this day because he wants to be all chill with LC - but Perez emailed Jason Wahler and said, “Is this true? Because I’m not going to run a story.” And I even saw the email where he wrote back to Perez: “Yes.” So right there it wasn’t me - Jason is who broke the story to TMZ and Perez. My mom tells me not to talk about this, but I’m so sick of people thinking that I made up some rumor about people I could care less about. If I was going to make up a rumor, it would’ve been so much better than that. You know what I mean? Kim and Paris just got famous off of sex tapes - sex tapes make you famous! Why would I try to make this girl famous? Trust me, I could come up with a better rumor about LC because I know way gnarlier things about her and Jason, at the time, that I never talked about and I still won’t talk about because it’s so heavy duty. But it’s like, if I was going to leak something to get back at somebody - that’s what I would’ve leaked man, and it would’ve been real because I know it for a fact. That’s the bottom line, if I was making up a rumor it would’ve been way better than ’Jason and LC have a sex tape’ - the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.

As for an October 2015 interview with Complex where it was stated that Spencer was the one who leaked the sex tape report, Spencer explained to me that he misinterpreted the question and meant to confirm the tape’s existence, not that he was the one who leaked the story.

What do you think about the state of reality shows and stars/celebrities of today versus when shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills were all the rage? What changed or hasn’t changed?

What’s changed with fame is that everybody is now their own paparazzi. You just turn your phone on, and make posts, and get into magazines. Like, if I’m Kate Hudson, and I want to put avocados on my eyes and act like I’m making a mess while eating macaroni and cheese and holding a bottle of wine and saying #bachelorette, I know I’m going to get in Us Weekly. Before it was way harder to figure out what to do to be in, ’Stars - They’re Just Like Us’ based off a real paparazzi photo. If you’re already famous, it’s like taking candy from a baby. If you give me Kate Hudson’s level of fame, I would be hanging out with Obama also. In reality shows, now what everyone thought we were so crazy for is like PG - it’s not even PG, it’s G-rated. What I was the worst guy for - “Get out of my car” - that’s G-rated compared to what goes down now on reality TV. It’s NC-17 level stakes and if you don’t bring that then the audience is like, “This is so boring!” People get arrested now, people overdose, people die - the stakes are so much more extreme. If you aired The Hills right now, I think people would think it’s on the Snapchat slow-motion filter.

Which one of your crystals is your favorite?

It’s weird, it’s one that I gave away to a charity before we left to Costa Rica. It’s a crystal that’s in my mind every day. It’s one of my biggest regrets ever. It was one of these huge smokey quartz, and when I say huge I mean at least 50lbs. It would fill a whole dining room table - a huge centerpiece. I gave it to some Us Weekly charity event when we were leaving, thinking we were going to leave for Costa Rica forever. I think about that crystal everyday, like, where is it? Who has it? It just haunts me, so it’s weird that my favorite crystal is the one I actually don’t have anymore. But smaller crystals that I do have? My tanzanite. I have a tanzanite that was a twin, but I carried it so much everyday for years that one day I left it in my pants and Heidi put it in the washing machine - and the twin means it’s a perfect mash, the shape of it it looks connected, so it looks like two exact pieces of tanzanite, and they’re like merged together. The top of the twin chipped off, so it’s kind of cool 'cause now you could see the inside of it, so I still love it, but that was my magical crystal because in all the books I read about tanzanite, that was the one all the shamans in Africa thought that was the most magical stone in the world. So I was like, “Oh, African shamans? This is magic!” I used to be a legit crystal expert, but then I was like, I need all my brain space back. So I used to be able to tell you every crystal, all their spiritual meanings, all their mathematical numbers, but my brain can only retain so much at this stage in the game.

How did you find out The Hills was ending?

I saw Jersey Shore. Once I saw that show on TV I was like, “Oh it’s game over, this shit is so entertaining!” Season 6 was not supposed to exist. Whatever we created in Season 5 got us a lifeline pickup that was not supposed to happen. And then they were even saying that if we can even get back up to 4 million viewers they would add a second half to 6, so that’s when I went full shaman-hippie-looney-tune, since all the producers kept saying, “All the editors love the crystals, bring more crystals, more tie-dye shirts, this is great!” So I was like fuck it, whatever it takes. And then by, like, Episode 3, I was at Charlie’s house. That was the day I famously put the crystal on my forehead. I was trying to calm down because right before that was filmed, this producer that they called ’The Collector’ [Sara Mast] - that Kristin Cavallari just told Us Weekly offered to bribe girls with Birkin bags to say that Kristin was a cokehead - that same producer said that I should punch my sister Stephanie in the face, just like Snookie just got punched that week on [Jersey Shore]. So then I called MTV and legal and I said I was going to tell everybody, so they talked to Us Weekly before me and said I threatened to kill a producer. They just got to the media first, while I’m dealing with lawyers and doing it, like, the politically correct way. The producers leaked to Us Weekly: “Spencer’s losing it, he threatened to kill a producer!” When really it was [Sara Mast] that got in my face, and she pretended to jerk off and bust a nut on my cheek and said: “You get paid so much, shut the fuck up.” She was literally trying to fight me.

What was the worst thing LC did off-camera?

Tell Heidi that if she kept filming with me, she’d be kicked off the show - when they were still friends and roommates, like, “Nah, you can’t film anymore” - before any rumors of any ’alleged’ sex tape. Once Brody stopped fake hooking up with LC, he was like, “Nah, I don’t wanna do this,” she was just over Brody and I. She was like, “We’re not double dating with them, you can’t hang out with them or you can’t be on my show.” She did that to a poor 18-year-old girl who just gave up her dreams in fashion school to be a reality star and BFF on a show - and you’re going to just tell her it’s either ’my’ way or you’re done? That to me is the coldest fricking… I don’t even want to say all the words that fit in that box.

One of my readers - who loves your Snapchat - asked if you would you ever consider getting a YouTube channel.

I love when it goes away, that’s why I don’t like Instagram because it doesn’t go away. I don’t think our audience is for YouTube. I don’t think I’d do anything interesting enough for YouTube. That’s why I like Snapchat. I don’t do anything interesting enough to last longer than 24 hours on any medium, in my opinion. But if there’s so many people that want to watch me eat burritos or something, I’m in. But I can’t get my name, I tried actually. Someone got YouTube.com/SpencerPratt back in 2007, it’s a bot or some asshole, and I can’t get it back, and YouTube won’t take accounts from people! I already had my lawyers research it, so that’s why I’m boycotting it. So you’re going to let a bot, that’s never posted one video, shit on my YouTube channel? Forget you Google!

Did you support or discourage Heidi’s surgeries?

It was only extreme after the fact. The way it was sold to us is, “Oh, I’m going to give you a half a million dollars worth of these minor little procedures,” and [Dr. Frank Ryan] name dropped ten A-list stars, and showed evidence of what he did to them and that it was all minor, and that you couldn’t even tell after the fact. We had so much going on at the time that it was just one more thing. It was like scheduling getting your nails done, that’s how much we thought about it. It was like, “Oh, I’m going to go on Wednesday and do this.” Lo and behold, nothing was minor. If he had done all of those things separately, then yeah - totally minor, fine, nobody would’ve ever noticed. We could’ve lied like every other famous person. But of course Heidi - so extreme - had to do everything in one day, “Let’s just get it all done so we could get back to life being famous!” All of those things, if she had done it one at a time and waited nine months before the next thing, no one would’ve ever noticed, but when you do all of it at once… The doctor did say: “Don’t go in public for seven months, all of this needs to calm down, your face is going to be swollen, everything’s going to look tight.” And we had that time off! But then [the producers] found out [the surgeries] happened and they were like, “No, you have to film!” Heidi talked to her mom, and she actually saw her before that first episode was filmed. Everything was chill and she’s like, “I’m not filming with you anymore mom, I don’t want to do this with you.” But Darlene was like, “No, it’s fine! I’m supportive!” She was totally on Heidi’s team, but at the time her family restaurant of 20 years was going bankrupt, and the producers gave her like $30K. They flew like, five producers in five days early, just drinking with Heidi’s mom, getting her all angry and mad - so they set Heidi up. By the time Heidi landed, the whole “Everything’s all good” - it’s not all good anymore. So that’s what happened, unfortunately. But people can paid off, which I’m sure they’re going to regret for the rest of their lives.

Should we ever expect a Speidi comeback, or are you and Heidi done with the game for good?

The game is done with us, obviously if a TV network wants to sponsor us, then we can come back. Like we talked about, if you have a TV network behind you, you can have a Robert Downey Jr. level comeback. If Marvel wants to put a billion dollars behind you, you can go from a felon & drug addict to now saving the planet. Give me a billion dollar back budget, and I guarantee you Speidi could take the game back. We’re like racecar drivers with no car and no tracks.

And on the subject of comebacks, which one of your '00s tabloid peers do you want to return to the spotlight? Paris or Nicole? Lindsay or Mischa?

I think Brody Jenner still hasn’t had his real shot and I think that they’re making the wrong show around him and not showing the real Brody Jenner, so obviously I’m biased, I’m going to name him first. On a bigger level, I thought Lindsay was going to pull it off with that Oprah reality show but she just blew that so hard, she just makes me so mad. How can you not film after you’ve made that deal? So that pissed me off and showed me she’s just going to marry some Russian billionaire and live on a yacht happily ever after. Paris? I loved [The World According To Paris], I don’t know why anyone else didn’t. I loved that show, Heidi and I didn’t miss an episode of that. I think Mischa Barton just got lucky with her role, you know, I don’t think her actual personality would warrant a comeback, I never heard an interview or heard her talk on a show. Sean Stewart, he could’ve, but they didn’t put him enough on that Stewarts & Hamiltons, he’s beyond entertaining.

Do you have any plans now or in the future to pursue a job that relates to your degree, or work any jobs outside of reality TV?

I definitely always wanted to work at the White House ‘cause my favorite show was 24, and I’d always watch how they would get the president and his advisors in the oval office and be like, “Okay, I think we should do this Mr. President.” I always wanted to be that guy that’s behind the scenes, that gets to go hang out in all the secret bunkers, that goes with the president to Area 51 - so that was always my dream, but then I accepted, like, these people go to Harvard or they go to Yale Law School. I’m on the JV team of manipulation and they’re on a pro-level, higher than I can even comprehend. But yeah, I definitely always wanted to work in the White House, and work for the president, and come up with the plans to leak stories and manipulate, etc. That and work for the CIA, obviously.

Have you run into any of your former costars (aside from the principal cast) since the show ended?

We ran into Corey - Audrina’s boyfriend - at Brody’s house about a year ago. I’d never met him because we never filmed together, so it was super random, funny, and awkward all at the same time - OH MY GOD YEAH - the creator! This was the craziest story ever. Since I was going to USC to get my degree, [Heidi and I] were at Staples buying supplies and I was walking back - and we hadn’t seen him since 2010 - and I see him, and I’m like, “Oh my god, there’s Adam DiVello!” He was coming out of the bathroom. The guy wasn’t even shopping there, he was just using the Staples bathroom, which is so damn funny. I rolled up to him right as he was coming out of the bathroom and I think he actually thought I was going to stab him - he probably had a heart attack because we were in the back, so it was like a nobody-would’ve-heard-him-scream type of situation. And I think, if he didn’t already poop in that bathroom, he definitely pooped in his pants. He was like, “What are you guys doing here? Are you following me?” I was like, “No, what are you doing here? I’m buying school supplies.” And he’s like: “Oh, I stopped to use their bathroom, so how are you guys?” To this day I regret not unloading him and just letting him have all of my opinions on him, but I was the bigger person & just kept it civil and polite, but I think if we had a second run-in I would have a few things to say to him still - even though Marriage Bootcamp’s Jim & Elizabeth helped me let go my anger towards him. I would probably have to tell him that he should thank Jim & Elizabeth for helping rid me of my anger.

Have you and Heidi ever been approached to appear on Made in Chelsea with Stephanie?

Yeah, we actually filmed a scene on Made in Chelsea with her and Lucy, but it was was when they were in L.A. for the summer and the production team wasn’t used to filming in L.A. so one of the team members left their crew van unlocked and all the cameras and footage were stolen. We might be going to the South of France to go film for the summer season, possibly.

And this question relates more to the theme/belief behind my blog: do you believe celebrity culture has gotten boring since the '00s?

I don’t know, Kim and Kanye entertain me a lot, but yeah I totally see what you mean - but I’m also biased because I feel like that was the heyday/mecca of everything. Tabloids were more fun then, there was way more money in the tabloid business. Paparazzos were getting paid half a million dollars for photos, so they were chasing you around in cars & jumping off of buildings to get these exclusive shots. There was so many more of them because there was so much money - there would be thirty from Brazil alone rolling around. It made the Britney’s, the Paris’, the Mischa’s, and the Lindsay’s feel the juice too, with the lights always going off. I know the feeling when thirty lights are flashing in your eyes. It’s like - this is the trippiest thing, it’s like you’re on another planet. I feel like that level of everyone caring about famous people is gone. I feel like people are now burnt out on famous people because now everybody’s famous in their own minds, on their YouTube channel, on their own podcasts, on their Snapchats, on their own Instagrams, so everyone’s like, “Why is that person famous? They’re not even funny! They’re not even pretty!” Now everyone’s a star, so everyone doesn’t care as much as before.

And finally, one of my readers asked for a piece of life advice.

One wrong move and it could mean your life - I don’t know how to word that right, but I didn’t get the stakes of life. Heidi and I just coasted through everything, like, “Oh, this is so fun!” Life is way more serious than I realized it was. It’s not fun and games. You can fuck up your whole life real quick without knowing it.

After Spencer and I spoke, I immediately remembered I forgot to ask him about the most important moment from the show:

So of course I had to DM him on Twitter and get the scoop. He confirmed to me that the scene was staged on Lauren & Audrina’s end, but Heidi had no clue what was about to go down when the producers dragged them to the club. As for Spencer, who suggested Heidi roll up to them in the first place, he said that the producers told him to do that - both oblivious to what LC & Ceiling Eyes had planned. What a shame, since all these years I actually thought Audrina’s “You’re brainwashed!” was genuine.

HAPPY 10 YEARS!

Thanks again Spencer for agreeing to do the interview!

In TouchMarch 26, 2007

On This Day In 2006The Hills premiered on MTV. Happy 10 Years!