Tara Reid out in Hollywood, August 2006

On This Day In 2006lonelygirl15 posted her first video.

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!

popculturediedin2009:

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.

Keep reading

I read Ally Hilfiger’s new book and pulled out all the #dirt on Rich Girls. From “My dad invented cargo pants” to the infamous burrito meltdown, she explains it all.

First, for anyone unfamiliar with the show, this will bring you up to speed. Anyways, Ally released a new book last month called Bite Me about her struggles with Lyme disease and how it took over her life. In the book she attributes most of her bizarre behavior - and vapid one-liners - to the effects of Lyme, which can include cognitive difficulties, memory loss, joint paints, nausea, dizziness - the list goes on. So I guess her almost passing out while making a burrito sorta makes sense now? Anyways, enough of the intro, let’s get into the good stuff!

~#DIRT~

- In the first three pages of the book, Ally refers to Rich Girls as “the show that ruined my life"… so, yeah. She doesn’t seem to have fond memories.

- Prior to Rich Girls, Ally had a show on Nantucket TV during Summer ‘02 called In the House with Ally Hilfiger, produced by her pal Cary Woods (Producer of Kids, Gummo, & Scream). The show was inspired by MTV Cribs& featured Ally going to people’s summer homes around Nantucket, taking a peek at their ~lifestyle.

- Later that summer New York magazine ran a piece on her, prompting MTV to reach out to her in Fall '02. They set up a meeting with her for Halloween & Ally went to their Times Square building dressed up as an angel. The reps she met initially pitched the idea that she could become a VJ, but she wasn’t interested by the idea, so to not seem rude she suggested that she could help them ”create a show.“

- The MTV reps were intrigued by the idea so Ally pitched a NYC Prep-style program about ”the lives of private school kids in New York“ & how they’re like ”mini-adults“ - clubbing, going to fancy stores, etc., all the while diving into the ~darker side~ of rich kids’ lives, which includes drug addictions, eating disorders, & parental neglect. She writes: ”I wanted people to stop judging the book by its over and instead go deep into the pages.“ She also suggested that cameras could also follow around kids in the Midwest, to show how vastly different their lifestyles are. The meeting ended with the MTV reps asking Ally to write a treatment, so she called her classmate/friend Jaime Gleicher & asked her to write one up.

- Ally met with Jaime the following day at Fred’s, and Jaime liked the idea of doing a show together, so Jaime typed up the treatment focusing on ”Upper East & Upper West Side privileged kids and the real issues that existed behind their closed doors.“ Jaime accompanied Ally to the second meeting with MTV reps, and Ally claims the MTV reps were much more ”businesslike“ that time around, asking for the names of the clubs & stores the girls go to. Before the girls signed their contracts, MTV had them film a pilot first.

- Here’s how the casting process went down:

"Though Jaime and I were acting savvy in the MTV office, and all the television execs were very excited about the prospects of the show, I was worried. All I could think about was that the cool clubs where the wealthy kids hung out were not going to allow cameras to record them serving underage kids. They would have been shut down, and I would have been partially responsible for ruining people’s livelihoods. I thought, 'No way is this whole thing going to pan out. It’s impossible.’ But while I was thinking that, the MTV reps were saying, 'We want you to shoot a pilot. Get some people together you can follow to a club, and highlight the lives that are more unusual.’ My head was spinning trying to think of whom I could ask to film. I was already sorting out different locations that would depict this glamorous life in the best possible way, while showing the real issues that were happening. 'How can I get places to let us film in them? Will my friends’ parents even allow their kids to take part in such a thing? How many camera crews? What is the budget? How many kids will we need to wrangle? How many guys? Girls? Do they have to know each other? Well, probably, because we’ll need some dynamic drama.’ Spinning, I tell you. We started calling all the people we thought would be a good fit for the show. Finding them wasn’t difficult at all; the Professional Children’s School was full of privileged Upper East and Upper West Side kids, most of whom wanted to be actors. It was the perfect talent pool. I remember calling one guy who had a sexy, bad-boy, drinks-martinis-in-the-middle-of-the-day vibe, exactly like the Ryan Phillippe character in Cruel Intentions. Pretty quickly, three or four kids from PCS agreed to be filmed for the pilot. When we arranged for a camera crew we were set, except for one small problem. The night before we were going to shoot, our on-air talent began to bail, one right after another, until we had no one. The excuses ran from 'I can’t go because I have an audition’ to 'I have to go to the country house with my mom.’ We were screwed.”

~#NeverForget the 'Ryan Phillippe of Cruel Intentions’ AKA Michael V~

- And when it came to actually filming the pilot, here’s what happened:

“As I remember, the pilot was supposed to show the kids getting a limo, getting a room at the St. Regis hotel, going shopping, and eating at Cipriani; after all that they would go to a club. What really happened was Jaime and I got the limo, we got the hotel room, and went shopping at Henri Bendel, but when it came to going to the club I was just too exhausted. Luckily, the shooting schedule didn’t include the camera crew following us to the club. Instead they were to film us the next morning at brunch, where we would recap the night before. The next day, over mimosas, Jaime and I made up a night at the club in front of the camera. I talked about 'Jason’ and 'Michelle’ hooking up, how crazy it was, and can you believe how messed up Bridgette got? Meanwhile, I actually had been in bed by nine thirty with a fever, which I seemed to get every night and which had been getting worse over the past weeks. I thought the crew would know I was lying and how Jaime and I had screwed up, and I thought there was no way MTV would pick up the show.”

- Despite Ally’s concerns, MTV ended up liking the pilot & ordered a full season:

“[The MTV rep] called for another meeting pretty quickly. When we went back to her office, she told us that the head of MTV had green-lit the project and wanted us to begin production right away… The big news, however, came with a big condition: Jaime and I had to be the stars of the show… Apparently, they liked our on-screen energy.”

- Tommy’s reaction to the news:

“When I told my dad that the TV show had been green-lit he was ecstatic. 'You’re going to create, produce, and star in a national - international - show for MTV? This is awesome!”

- And Mama Gleicher’s:

“After talking to my dad, I went over to Jaime’s apartment on the Upper West Side. 'Listen,’ her mom said, 'this is a really great opportunity. It could lead to so many things in your careers.”

- Ally and Jaime signed their MTV contracts without a parent, manager, or agent present: “I never went to one MTV meeting with anyone other than Jaime.”

- Ally didn’t tell her mother the big news until after she signed the contract, and needless to say, she wasn’t happy about it:

“It was no surprise that she was very upset. 'We are a private family,’ she said. 'They’re going to exploit us, our family name.’ She asked if we had control over editing (how savvy was Mom, huh?). 'Yes, yes,’ I said, and I thought we did but we had no control, not even over the show’s title… 'What were you thinking?’ my mother asked. 'And what was your father thinking?’”

- Ally & Jaime got paid $36,000 to do the show.

- Some bits about filming the first episode:

“The first show was about shopping for the prom. They rented a limo for us, a form of transportation that I would never use to just shop around New York. I usually just hop in a cab, or better yet, take the subway. We went to private showrooms with my 'uncle’ Michael H. Michael isn’t really my uncle. [My grandparents] sort of adopted him at an early age.”

- Ally would constantly feel lightheaded due to the Lyme, so she would always need something to eat. Since they were always followed by cameras, and it was nearly impossible to get filming clearance from every restaurant they wanted to go to, she resorted to carrying around lollipops everywhere.

- The infamous “cargo pants” line was a product of what Ally calls ’Lyme brain’:

“I was so tired during filming I couldn’t think straight. I had full-on Lyme brain and didn’t even know it. I started to say things that I knew were incorrect but couldn’t stop, like, 'My dad invented cargo pants.’ What? What the hell was I thinking? I knew my dad didn’t invent cargo pants; I was probably trying to say that he liked to design cargo pants. Too late. That one made it into the scene and ended up being one of the main things people like to make fun of me for saying.”

- While consulting a healer over her then-undiagnosed Lyme disease symptoms, the healer suggested Ally should tap her “third eye” twenty-one times to relieve anxiety - anybody who watched the show will get what this is in reference to.

- After her first day of shooting, Ally realized she had made a huge mistake signing onto the show, but didn’t want to disappoint Jaime who really wanted to be an actress.

- For a ten-episode season, the girls shot six to seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, for five months.

- She reveals the story behind that emotional on-camera phone call to her dad:

“One Monday late in July, I had just come home from a quick and intense extended-family weekend trip to Nantucket. My dad’s family has a lot of complicated dynamics. I’d just graduated from high school that June, and that weekend my family had asked a lot of questions: 'What are you going to do now?’ 'Are you going to continue with the show?’ 'How about working for your dad?’ I had to cut the trip short to come home to shoot, and when I woke up Monday morning I realized I had not planned anything for the show, which was my responsibility. The camera crew was on its way and I was alone in Dad’s house. Shit. I might be witty when prompted by others, but alone, I just felt depressed and overwhelmed. I was also terribly hungover from the weekend… Sitting around doing nothing is not compelling TV. I began to feel irresponsible. The crew had driven up from the city, people were getting paid, the director was pacing. Although they didn’t say anything to me, I felt pressured to perform for them, or at least to try to think up something interesting for them to film me doing. Jaime had taken up the slack for me when I was away for the weekend, so it was my turn to be filmed alone so Jaime could have a little break. My anxiety started to build, and filming began to spiral downward… That day at my dad’s, I started to feel out of control, scared, and so very lonely. I needed a container to hold what I was going through. The confusion, physical pain, and heart palpitations Lyme disease causes are torment enough. Add a hangover, a camera crew for a reality TV show, loneliness, and, well, what you get is just what happened to me: I started to break down. And I could think of only one person to talk to about it. On the phone with Dad that day I was a lost little girl as the cameras rolled. Although I haven’t seen the episode in many years, remembering now how I exposed myself so publicly still makes me cringe. I came across like the spoiled brat I warned you about, whining and crying about how hard my life was while I was walking around Dad’s swimming pool. This was the first time I really got personal and private on camera…”

- And she even explains the infamous burrito meltdown, a moment on par with “Nancy Jo, this is Alexis Neiers calling…” in reality TV history, IMO:

“After the phone call to my dad, the episode devolved into theater of the absurd. I decided that the only thing that could help me was a burrito. There was nothing in my dad’s refrigerator, and I wasn’t about to order in food and wait for an hour and a half, sitting around being nervous or just flat-out fainting on camera. I thought it would make for an interesting on-camera activity for me to go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients to make burritos. Now, picture walking into a small grocery store on a summer holiday, and then picture walking in with a camera crew of four. 'Seriously? I am actually doing this? No one will let me go anywhere ever again!’ I also had no idea what kind of specific ingredients went into making a burrito. All I knew was that I needed something to eat and that I had better make something fast or I might pass out… I arrived home and called one of my closest friends at the time, Danielle. I needed someone else on camera with me and to help me make the burritos. All I wanted was to eat as soon as possible, and in a comfortable environment. My heart had been racing the whole day, my hands felt shaky, and I couldn’t think clearly anymore… As soon as Danielle came to the house, I hugged her and immediately began to chop onions. Danielle knew how to make rice, and I knew how to chop onions. We didn’t know how to cook or season ground beef or how to cook beans. Danielle began asking me questions. 'What do you want to do while the rice is cooking? What kind of seasoning should we put on the beef? Do you need the beans? What about lettuce? Did you know that burritos have a lot of carbs? What do you want to do after we eat? Where do you want to eat? How did the earth come to exist? Why do you think toenails are the shape and color they are? How do I break up with my boyfriend? What are you going to do after the summer? Do you think your parents will ever get back together? What do you want me to help you with? Ally, Ally? Ally? Are you okay…?'… 'Danielle, I am starving. All I want is to have the rice, with beef, on a plate, and in my mouth, as soon as humanly possible. I feel like I do not know how to make a decision as simple as how much salt I need to shake into the pan right now.’ 'Well, we have a lot of options. We could not eat, eat, order in, sit outside, go upstairs, take a nap… What do you feel like doing?’ I grabbed Danielle’s hand and ran outside and we jumped into the swimming pool with all of our clothes on - microphones still attached. I dragged her with me. I didn’t care what happened. I wanted to escape and feel free, and it was the only way to shut her up. It looked like a fun, innocent, and lighthearted thing to do in the moment, but little did anyone know, I was so overwhelmed that all I could do was jump into deep cold water to numb out. I knew alcohol wasn’t the answer. I knew I had drunk enough that weekend, and I didn’t want to be totally annihilated on-screen. And all I wanted to do was eat a fucking burrito.”

- And more #dirt on the filming process, and the well-documented feud between Jaime and Liz:

“When my friend Liz Meyer joined Rich Girls, things really became unhinged. Jaime and Liz didn’t get along. It was almost as though they were competing for my friendship. I know that sounds terribly self-centered, but that’s how it seemed to me… The discomfort of the situation pervaded every part of my life. The show used a lot of interviews where I was alone and talked right to the camera, a format that is now a reality TV staple. The reason they’re a staple is that there is so much pressure on the person being interviewed - the viewer doesn’t see the camera, the lights, and the crew. But I was defensive and, most of the time, brutally honest. One time when we were shooting interviews in a hotel, I was exhausted, so drained. The show wasn’t supposed to create rifts in my relationships. I was fed up with both Jaime and Liz and their childish behavior, and pissed at them because they had put me in this awkward situation. The director was asking me really uncomfortable questions about my friendships and perspectives on Jaime and Liz, questions that I did not feel comfortable answering, because I didn’t want to hurt either of their feelings. Then, in the middle of the interview, I told the crew to turn off the camera and I walked into a bathroom. I crawled onto the bath mat and began to sob. I felt so trapped, so freaked out, that I just wanted to end my life. The show hadn’t even aired yet and it was killing me.”

- Jaime was mad at Ally for refusing to do anything to promote the show:

“My costar and I had grown very distant, and I was afraid to tell her that I didn’t want to do the talk shows, TV spots, or magazine interviews, let alone film a second season. I had distance myself from her because I thought she probably enjoyed filming and the glow of the spotlight, whereas I was turned off by it. I felt violated by it. What I didn’t know was that Lyme disease was causing me so much pain and mental disorder that it was impossible for me to do what the show and Jaime wanted… I picked up my phone and I dialed Jaime. On the phone I was cold, emotionless. I think I left my body a little bit. I just told her the truth but did so in a rude and blunt way. I wasn’t going to have any part in the show anymore, I said. I didn’t care about the contract - I would get out of it somehow. I told her that I no longer wanted to be her friend.”

- By the time the show premiered, Ally was living in Miami with some friends:

“ When the MTV show aired in October, a bunch of us Miami friends gathered in [my boyfriend’s] living room. We laughed and hollered and made fun of the show from head to toe. Though it felt good to laugh at myself, and I was impressed at the clever way they edited us to make us look a lot more ridiculous than we actually were… I began to feel a little embarrassed that I was on national television acting like a dumb rich girl. I kept sneaking off to the refrigerator to take little sips out of a Jager bottle to round off the edges of anxiety I was feeling… At some point I received a call from Wendy at MTV telling me that the show was getting some of the highest ratings numbers they had seen in a while, but what she said was lost on me. I just wanted it all to go away, so I talked myself into the idea that the show was a bust. I began to realize otherwise one day at a gas station in Miami… I thought people were staring at me but I shrugged it off as paranoia until someone asked if they could take a photo of me… A couple of days later I’d gone to Target and I started to get a headache… I was standing there staring at the lights for I don’t know how long when I had the sensation of people looking at me. I turned around and a group of about six shoppers was watching me. 'You’re Ally from Rich Girls,’ one of them said in an amazed way. A woman aimed her flip-phone at me to take a photo. I felt like an animal in a zoo. 'What are you doing in Target!’ a woman squealed… I began to full-on freak out when the same scenario repeated itself several more times in the store.”

- Her paranoia over being recognized continued to grow. During one incident in particular, she was about to board a plane to visit a cousin in Orlando when she began to fear people were watching her, following her, and going to blow up the plane. She started to vomit, and a security guard took her to a private room to call her father - who didn’t understand she was having a breakdown. She tried renting a car, but didn’t know she had to be twenty-five, so she ended up wandering onto someone’s lawn, climbed a tree, and sat there for about four hours, crying & singing, until a friend picked her up. She writes: “I couldn’t walk into a gas station without being recognized. I thought someone was out to get me and that stalkers waited around every corner to attack me.”

- By the time the show stopped airing, she hadn’t slept, showered, or eaten in days, and roamed around New York City armed with pine tree branches (the scent, she claims, relieved nausea), and carrying books to give to strangers - either The Power of Now, or Mother Teresa’s In My Own Words. She sums it up best: “I had become that homeless woman you see on the sidewalk passing out pamphlet on Forty-Ninth Street, talking to herself.”

*~Oblig~*

- After that, she returned to Connecticut, where she began throwing plates around her mother’s house - a la 2001 Ice-cream-cart-toting-Mariah - & begged her dad for drugs to relieve her pain, causing him to think she was a drug addict & abusing things way more serious than weed (she does admit to using coke a few times in the book - she did not say, however, if it was only 10-15 times). After Christmas, Tommy returned home from a trip to Colorado as Ally continued to unravel:

“I woke up late the next afternoon to find my father waiting for me in the kitchen. I was still very angry at him. I kept telling him that I was sick, that something was wrong inside me. I began to think about the parasites again and that he wasn’t getting the message. I got out of bed, grabbed a silver tray off a table, went into the bathroom, defecated on it, and handed it to him. 'You’ve gotta get this tested,’ I said. 'If there are parasites in there you’re going to be sorry.’

- Following the feces-filled confrontation, she decided she wanted to go to Jamaica because of her bizarre in-the-moment obsession with Bob Marley:

”Finally it seemed my dad heard what I was trying to say. 'Okay,’ he said. 'I’ll take you to the airport and we’ll go to Jamaica.’ I went upstairs, took a shower, and put some stuff into a suitcase. When I came downstairs, my dad grabbed me and shoved pills down my throat. He was hurting me and I looked toward the security guard for help. He said, 'Mr. Hilfiger, take your hands off your daughter,’ and my dad released me but the pills had already dissolved. They did calm me down. They took me out to the car while my mother screamed, 'Do not take her! Do not take her!’ Her boyfriend was holding her back, but my Mom was kicking and screaming. She was trying to help me but she didn’t know how. They put me in the backseat with a security guard on either side and my dad drove. It soon became apparent that we were not headed toward the airport. 'Where are you taking me?’ I asked. 'Ally, I’m taking you to the emergency room.’ I yelled at Dad to let me out. I was afraid that there would be cameras and reporters and people would recognize me at the hospital. One of the guards assured me that we were going in a back entrance, that it was private and no one would know. Inside the hospital door, a doctor was waiting for us. The thought of seeing a doctor calmed me down enough that I walked into the emergency room without a struggle. And that’s when I started playing with a purple glove while he injected me with something… and blackout.“

- After spending some heavily medicated & sleep-filled time in the psych ward, which she likens to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, she was moved to the part of the hospital that functions as a drug & alcohol rehab (with alumni like Judy Garland, MJ, & Steph Seymour). The doctors had no clue about Ally’s lyme disease & simply assumed she was an addict. And to top things off, Ally’s roommate at the rehab admitted to having seen Rich Girls. Yikes! After four months at Silver Hill, she finally left in the spring of 2004, feeling better but still not cured. It wouldn’t be until a little later on that she was finally diagnosed with Lyme, coincidentally by one of her substance abuse counselors.

- Random tidbit, but in November '02, Ally wrote that she & friend Kate (Luckinbill maybe? She didn’t specify) were arrested at a bar in Katonah on Thanksgiving eve for underage drinking. Ally said she wanted to use the experience as a ”tool“ for her acting, so she asked the cops to treat her & Kate like everybody else - handcuffs, Miranda rights, etc. She even helped the cops fingerprint her, and asked them if her hair looked good in her mugshot (Okay, we NEED to find this mugshot)! When they searched through Ally’s bag, she was scared they’d find weed, but instead they found her fake ID and scribbled down ”Felony D“ - causing Ally to exclaim, ”Oh my god! I’m a felon!“ Her & Kate were locked up until the next morning, & a while later, Ally’s lawyer had the charges reduced & record sealed. I’m including this since it reminds me of one of my favorite Alexis Neiers gifs.

The rest of the book focuses on Ally’s struggles with Lyme disease & the many treatments she’s taken, doctors she’s seen, etc. I recommend you guys check it out since I literally had no idea how severe the disease could be until I read it, plus it gives Ally a lot more depth than the show did, so it’s nice to see her in a different light. I skimmed the ’Acknowledgements’ and spotted a Yolanda Foster shout-out too lmao. Hope my fellow Rich Girls fans liked the post! I need something else to read next, so message me any good recs!

~This town is our town, it’s so glamorous~

GIFs by hotasice

popculturediedin2009:

Andy Dick does cocaine at a club in NYC, April 2007

Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson out in Hollywood, 2006

Lo Bosworth, 2005

Did you know there’s a romantic link between Liz Taylor & Amanda Bynes? Ellen DeGeneres & Rick James? If not, you’re about to find out how!

Star is my favorite tabloid for many reasons, the first being that it doesn’t look like it was thrown together in MS Paint like In Touch, and also because it has some fun little tidbits on each page. For the past year there’s been an occasional feature in the magazine called Six Degrees of Stimulation, linking seemingly random celebrities through their shared romantic past, and I figured I’d share all of their fun connections with you guys! There’s a few repeats:

1).Elizabeth& Colin Farrell had a non-consummated romantic relationship in the two years leading up to her death. The two met at a hospital when his son Henry was born & Liz was having a stent put into her heart. He’s later claimed that they would talk on the phone late at night, and he was one of the few non-family members invited to her funeral.

2).Colin& Britney Spears went on a couple of dates in early 2003.

3).Britney& Fred Durst hooked up after her split from Justin Timberlake. When he bragged about it to the media, she denied it ever happened.

4).Fred& Paris Hilton dated for a bit in 2004, and during her Sidekick hack the following year a leaked email from him to her revealed that she called him “the one” and that he entered a state of depression after their split.

5).Paris& Doug Reinhardt started dating in 2009 and split the following year amidst rumors that he was using her for fame.

6).Doug& Amanda Bynes became an item in late 2008 after his split from Lauren Conrad. The two split in January 2009, and he later said in an interview during her 2013 breakdown that she has “a few screws loose.” Other rumors have suggested he was abusive to her.

1).Janet& Matthew McConaughey were an item for a hot second in 2002.

2).Matthew& Sandra Bullock dated for a couple of years after costarring in 1996’s A Time To Kill.

3).Sandra& Ryan Gosling dated for nearly two years after meeting on the set of 2002’s Murder By Numbers.

4).Ryan& Rachel McAdams were an item for several years after filming 2004’s The Notebook.

5).Rachel& Jake Gyllenhaal were rumored to have been an item in 2014 & 2015 after filming Southpaw.

6).Jake& Taylor Swift were hot & heavy from October to December 2010.

1).John& Jennifer Aniston were on-and-off from 2008 - early 2009.

2).Jen& Brad Pitt got married in 2000… and we all know how that ended up.

3).Brad& Sinitta were an item for a moment in the ‘80s.

4).Sinitta& Simon Cowell dated for a bit in the '80s, but still remained friends afterwards.

5).Simon& Carmen Electra were an item for a few months in 2012 - 2013, but things ended when he #allegedly cheated on her.

6).Carmen& Dennis Rodman famously got hitched in Vegas back in 1998, but ended things for good the following April.

1).Matthew& Sandra Bullock were an item for a bit in the '90s, and she called him a “powerful force” in her life.

2).Sandra& Ryan Gosling dated for a couple of years in the early '00s, but split due to their busy workloads & long distance.

3).Ryan& Rachel McAdams had an off-and-off five-year romance in the mid-00s.

4).Rachel& Michael Sheen started dated for a few years after filming 2011’s Midnight in Paris.

5).Michael& Sarah Silverman have been dating since 2014.

6).Sarah& Jimmy Kimmel dated for five years before splitting in 2008.

1).Bradley& Renee Zellweger dated from 2009 to 2011 after meeting on the set of Case 39. They were even rumored to have been engaged at one point.

2).Renee& Matthew Perry went on a few dates in 2002 after meeting at a party thrown by Amanda Peet.

3).Matthew& Julia Roberts went on a couple of dates in early 1996.

4).Julia& Liam Neeson started dating after meeting on the set of 1988’s Satisfaction. She was 19, he was 35.

5).Liam& Brooke Shields dated for three months in 1991 before he proposed to her, she said no.

6).Brooke& John Travolta had a summer romance in 1981 after meeting at photographer Patrick Demarchelier’s studio. She was 16, he was 27. Her mother approved.

1).Asthon& January Jones dated from 1998 to 2001. He told her she wasn’t a good actress.

2).January& Josh Groban dated for a few years after meeting at an InStyle magazine party. In 2006 his rep announced they were “taking a break.”

3).Josh& Katy Perry got cozy in 2009, but Josh admitted the two never really dated, only “skated on the line of dating.”

4).Katy& Russell Brand dated for only three months before he proposed in 2010. Their marriage only lasted a year.

5).Russell& Teresa Palmer were an item for a few months in 2008 after meeting on the set of Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories.

6).Teresa& Topher Grace dated on-and-off for a few years starting in 2007.

1).Amy& John Stamos went on a dinner date in 2012 fresh off of her split with Will Arnett.

2).John& Paula Abdul made their debut as a couple at the 1990 Grammy’s, and were finished by the Emmy’s.

3).Paula& Emilio Estevez announced they were a couple in January 1992, got engaged a month later, walked down the aisle two months after that, and got divorced within two years.

4).Emilio& Demi Moore started dating after starring together in 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire. By the end of the year they were engaged, and when it came time for their wedding in 1986, their schedules were both so busy that they couldn’t even attend. They were dunzo by '87.

5).Demi& Ashton Kutcher started dating in 2003, got married in a Kabbalist ceremony in 2005, and lasted all the way through 2011 when Ashton’s many unprotected ’indiscretions’ finally drove them to divorce - and Demi to rehab.

6).Ashton& Mila Kunis got together fresh off of his split with Demi. The two were engaged by 2014, and married in 2015. Currently, she’s expecting their second child.

1).Tom& Nicole Kidman got married in 1990 after nearly a year of dating, and Scientology drove them to divorce a decade later in 2001.

2).Nicole& Lenny Kravitz started dating in the summer of '03, but split the following year amidst cheating rumors. There were even rumors that they were engaged at one point.

3).Lenny& Vanessa Paradis became an item after he helped her produce her first English album in 1992. The couple split several years later after she met Human Trash.

4).Vanessa& Human Trash started hooking up in 1998, and welcomed their first child together - Lily-Rose - the following year. The two split over a decade later.

5).Trash& Winona Ryder started dating after meeting at the premiere of her 1989 film Great Balls of Fire. The two got engaged later that year, and split by 1993. She was a teenager, he was pushing 30.

6).Winona& Charlie Sheen hooked up while making their 1986 film Lucas. He later said he was the one who convinced her to drop the name 'Horowitz’ and go for 'Ryder.’

1).Glenn& Woody Harrelson had a brief romance in 1991 after working on a Los Angeles stage play together called Brooklyn Laundry.

2).Woody& Brooke Shields briefly dated in 1988. Her mother Teri disapproved of the pairing because she thought Woody was too ’low-brow.’

3).Brooke& Matt Dillon were an item for a hot second in 1980.

4).Matt& Cameron Diaz started dating while they were both filming movies in Minnesota. They split after filming 1998’s There’s Something About Mary.

5).Cameron& Timberdouche started their romance in 2003, and split several years later in 2007 amidst rumors he was making moves on Jessica Biel.

6).Timberdouche& Britney Spears started hooking up in 1998 while Brit was touring with 'N Sync. The two confirmed their relationship in 2000, and split after they cheated on each other in 2002, paving the way for his yawn-inducing solo career built on passive aggression and misogyny.

1).John& Kelly Preston dated for five months before getting engaged, and later married in 1991.

2).Kelly& Charlie Sheen got engaged after only a short time together in 1990, but she later ended things after he shot her in the arm… ’accidentally.’

3).Charlie& Denise Richards started dating after meeting on the set of Scary Movie 3. They married the following year, and split a few years later amidst allegations of abuse, cheating, and child porn.

4).Denise& Richie Sambora started hooking up while Richie was splitting from Denise’s BFF Heather Locklear in 2006. Needless to say, the girls are no longer friends.

5).Richie& Cher briefly dated in 1989.

6).Cher& Tom Cruise briefly romanced one another in the '80s, and she’s since called him one of her best lovers.

1).Hugh& Holly Madison got serious in the mid-00s after she became the top girlfriend in the mansion. She left him in 2008 after years of emotional & mental abuse.

2).Holly& Criss Angel briefly dated from late 2008 to early '09, and Holly later revealed he was a possessive, insecure, & fame-obsessed nutjob in her book Down The Rabbit Hole.

3).Criss& Cameron Diaz hooked up in mid-2007 as he was divorcing his wife of four years.

4).Cameron& Alex Rodriguez were on-and-off from mid-2010 to 2011. He later called her “one of the greatest human beings” he’s ever met.

5).Alex& Kate Hudson had a May to December romance in 2009, she left him because he wasn’t over Madonna.

6).Kate& Alpaca Jonas had a brief fling in 2015, and have been spotted together a few times since.

1).Mick& Janice Dickinson hooked up several times from 1981 to 1982 while he was with Jerry Hall. When Jerry caught wind of the affair, she phoned Janice and told her: “Stay the fuck away from Mick! I’ve got a gun in my purse and I know how to use it!”

2).Janice& Warren Beatty dated for a bit in 1983, and Janice has since labeled him one of her best lovers.

3).Warren& Madonna had a 15-month fling after filming 1990’s Dick Tracy. She later called him an “incredible lover” on the Howard Stern show.

4).Madonna& Dennis Rodman were an item for a couple of months in 1994, and he’s since claimed that she was desperate to have his baby.

5).Dennis& Vivica Fox had a fling in 1997.

6).Vivica& 50 Cent dated in 2003, but ended things on a nasty note. The two have since battled it out in the media, and most recently Vivica’s insinuated he’s gay.

1).Matt& Winona Ryder started dating in 1998 after Ben Affleck’s then-girlfriend Goop fixed them up (Ben described the situation as “so gay”). The pair later split in 2000 amidst cheating rumors on both sides, which they quickly denied.

2).Winona& Christian Slater dated for two weeks while filming 1988’s Heathers.

3).Christian& Christina Applegate reportedly had a fling in 1996, but in recent years the two have denied it ever happened.

4).Christina& Brad Pitt went on a date in 1989. The venue? The MTV Movie Awards. By the end of the night she’d left with another man.

5).Brad& Gwyneth Paltrow dated for a couple of years before getting engaged in 1996, but ended things the following May. Goop later said: “My heart sort of broke that day & it will never be the same.”

6).Gwyneth& Ben Affleck started hooking up in 1997, and were on-and-off as a couple through 2000. She later said that Ben’s perfect woman would be “a stripper with a Budweiser in each hand.”

1).Sofia& Tom Cruise dated in early 2005, but she wasn’t interested in Scientology so the fling fizzled fast.

2).Tom& Cher briefly dated in the '80s, he was 16 years her junior.

3).Cher& Elvis Presley were never a couple, but he did ask her out on a date in the '70s - she turned him down because she was ’too scared.’

4).Elvis& Linda Thompson dated for four years in the '70s, splitting only months before his death.

5).Linda& Caitlyn Jenner were married for five years before divorcing in 1986. They had two sons together, Brody & Brandon Jenner.

6).Caitlyn& Kris Jenner dated for several months before getting married in 1991. They split over 20 years later in 2013, and finalized their divorce the following year.

1).Nicole& Joel Madden went public with their relationship in December 2006 after he split from Hilary Duff. Days after his split with Hilary, however, Nicole was arrested for DUI & Joel was listed as her emergency contact… you do the math.

2).Joel& Hilary Duff started dating in 2004. The two split a couple of years later, and she’s since hinted that she lost her virginity to him. She was 16, he was 25.

3).Hilary& Aaron Carter started dating on Aaron’s 13th birthday in 2000. The couple split after he cheated on her with La Lohan, but reunited afterwards - and then split again when he hooked up with Hilary’s best friend.

4).Aaron& Lindsay Lohan started seeing each other in 2002 while he was still with Hilary Duff. They ended things shortly after, but the Duff/Lohan feud lasted for several more years.

5).Lindsay& Timberdouche hooked up at The Beverly Hills Hotel in 2008 while he was dating Jessica Biel.

6).Timberdouche& Cameron Diaz were an item from 2003 to January 2007.

1).Bradley& Renee Zellweger dated from 2009 to 2011. They split amidst speculation that he was putting his career first.

2).Renee& Luke Perry reportedly went on a date in early 2007.

3).Luke& Rebecca Gayheart had a brief fling in the summer of 2003, years after they were an on-screen couple in Beverly Hills, 90210.

4).Rebecca Gayheart& Eric Dane started dating in 2003, and married the following year. They have two daughters together, and a sex tape.

5).Eric& Lara Flynn Boyle dated briefly in the early '00s, while she was still seeing Jack Nicholson.

6).Lara& Jack Nicholson made their debut as a couple when they got into a car accident in 1999 (she was still dating David Spade at the time). She reportedly crawled out of the sunroff and yelled: “I have a boyfriend! I can’t be here!” The romance ended a couple of years later.

1).Charlie& Denise Richards got married in 2002 and split in 2005, yet she’s still putting up with the him to this very day - what a saint.

2).Denise& Nikki Sixx dated for a few weeks in December 2010. The two were neighbors for years beforehand.

3).Nikki& Kat Von D were an item from 2008 to 2010, but they must’ve ended things on a good note since he later posted on MySpace: “You won’t find me saying a bad word about her… we have too much wonderful history.”

4).Kat& Jesse James got together after his split with Sandra in 2010, but the two anti-semites split the following year & Kat revealed he cheated on her with 19 women.

5).Jesse& Sandra Bullock started dating in 2004, got married the following year, and split several years later in 2010 after reports of his many…many extramarital affairs surfaced.

6).Sandra& Ryan Gosling - yeah, we know already.

1).Tara& Tommy Lee had a brief fling in 2005. He was quoted in People as having told a friend: “We’re just playing and having fun. She’s rad.”

2).Tommy& Naomi Campbell partied together quite a few times in 2004, and he told People that the two were “kind of” dating and that they met through Diddy.

3).Naomi& Diddy dated briefly in 2002, but remain good friends to this day.

4).Diddy& Jennifer Lopez started dating in 1999, but split after a two-year criminal trial resulting from a New York City club shooting.

5).Jennifer& Ben Affleck, or Bennifer, revealed themselves as a couple days before Jenny split from her husband Criss Judd in 2002. The pair got engaged that fall, but called off their wedding the following September. The two were dunzo by early 2004.

6).Ben& Gwyneth Paltrow dated for a bit in the late '90s, but she’s since stated that he was ’not in a good place’ during their relationship.

1).Gisele& Tom Brady got together in January 2007, shortly after he dumped his pregnant girlfriend Bridget Moynahan the previous December.

2).Tom& Tara Reid had a fling for a month in 2002.

3).Tara& Tommy Lee were an item for a hot second in 2005, shortly after rumors surfaced she was dating Jesse Metcalfe.

4).Tommy& Heather Locklear met at a REO Speedwagon concert in '85, got married the following year, and split in 1993 amid rumors that Tommy was cheating on her while on the road.

5).Heather& Scott Baio were an item in 1983, and he’s since called her his first true love, adding: “If she had come into my life when I was 40, I may have been ready for something that fantastic.”

6).Scott& Liza Minnelli hooked up in 2005, and reports years earlier claimed that Liza hit up Scott for sperm to transfer into a surrogate womb because he was a “talented, good-looking Italian guy.”

1).Gerard& Brandi Glanville hooked up in August 2011, but he later admitted he had no idea who she was.

2).Brandi& Ben Stiller went on a couple of dates in the late '90s.

3).Ben& Christine Taylor dated for nearly a year after meeting on the set of a scrapped TV pilot. The two married in 2000, and have two children together.

4).Christine& Matt Lillard dated for a bit in the mid-'90s.

5).Matt& Rose McGowan had a brief relationship after meeting on the set of 1996’s Scream.

6).Rose& Marilyn Manson met at a screening of the film Gummo and dated for a couple of years before getting engaged in 1999. The two split in 2001, and Rose has since blamed the demise of their relationship on his heavy cocaine use.

1).Helen& Liam Neeson dated in the early '80s and lived together in London for several years. Helen said she even took his first headshots.

2).Liam& Julia Roberts were an item in the late '80s and briefly lived together in Venice, Calif. before breaking up.

3).Julia& Matthew Perry briefly dated after meeting on the set of Friends.

4).Matthew& Heather Graham hooked up in 2003.

5).Heather& Heath Ledger dated for a year from 2000 to 2001.

6).Heath& Lindsay Lohan were reportedly seeing each other at the time of his death in January 2008, and she later included him in her leaked sex list.

1).John& Brooke Shields had a short-lived relationship in 1982. She later described it as: “Brief, short-lived. It was a good diary entry, that’s all.”

2).Brooke& Liam Neeson were an item in the '90s, and after he proposed to her he disappeared to L.A… only to return and propose to her again - without a ring.

3).Liam& Janice Dickinson hooked up in 1983, and she later said he had the “biggest penis of any man alive. He unzipped his pants and an Evian bottle fell out.”

4).Janice& Sylvester Stallone were engaged for a year in the '90s after she told him that she thought he was the father of her baby Savannah. When it turned out to be untrue, he left her.

5).Sylvester& Brigitte Nielsen got married in 1985 and split 19 months later. She said he was so “obsessed” with her that he carved her image into their furniture.

6).Brigitte& Flavor Flav started dating after meeting on The Surreal Life in 2004. They later had their own show together called Strange Love, but split in 2005 due to constant fighting.

1).Ellen& Anne Heche were an item from 1997 to 2000. Ellen blamed their split on the intense media attention they received as a couple.

2).Anne& Steve Martin dated for a couple of years before splitting in 1997. She explained the breakup by saying she didn’t want to commit her life to him.

3).Steve& Bernadette Peters were in a relationship for four years after filming 1979’s The Jerk.

4).Bernadette& Warren Beatty hooked up after he saw her once onstage.

5).Warren Beatty& Iman dated for a bit in 1977.

6).Iman& Rick James hooked up once.

1).Diane& Warren Beatty dated for a couple of years after filming 1981’s Reds.

2).Warren& Stephanie Seymour briefly dated in 1991 after he reportedly offered to help her kickstart an acting career.

3).Stephanie& Charlie Sheen had a fling in 1992 while she was still dating Axl Rose. Charlie said at the time: “We’re madly in love & very happy together.” Axl & Stephanie split a year later.

4).Charlie& Denise Richards - there’s not much more I can say about these two.

5).Denise& Nikki Sixx went on several dates in December 2010, but have remained good friends since.

6).Nikki& Kat Von D dated for a bit in the late '00s before she ditched him for Jesse James.

Hope you guys enjoyed the post! Which of these couples do you miss the most?

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen graduate from high school, June 2004

Professor Lohan wants to educate you on world issues.

In case you don’t keep up with important world issues (other than Mary-Kate Olsen’s changing face), then you might not be totally aware that there’s been a vote as to whether or not the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union, but it’s okay, our girl Lindsay is here to save the day and educate you on this hot topic - while squeezing in some nonsensical Mean Girls related hashtags too:

She takes a brief detour to express her concerns on a Mississippi jailbreak:

But she promptly returns to the issue at hand:

#IAMIRISH is my new favorite hashtag.

Awww! Remember when Lily & Lindsay got matching tats?

Anyways, back to the good stuff:

In case you’re scratching your head and thinking, “Why is Lindsay Lohan qualified to speak about anything?” then let me direct you to her long and illustrious history of political activism! PCD2009 reader Spencer Pratt is a fan of Lindsay’s political efforts too:

I vote Lindsay

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 24, 2016

@lindsaylohan is so smart

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 24, 2016

Hope you enjoyed your weekly dose of Lohan!

popculturediedin2009:

Lindsay Lohan responds to a fan on AIM, April 2007

Bella Hadid before the surgeries, Sky Ferreira before the heroin, and a blind item I plan on revealing (so start sending in your guesses)!

The first few stories are school related because of this post.

~CELEBRITY ENCOUNTERS~

Michael Phelps

“My sister’s friend had a class with Michael Phelps and he flaked out on their group project and she’s still mad.” - Anonymous

Pentatonix

“I know this girl that went to high school with Scott, Mitch and Kirstin from Pentatonix. They say they were nerds, but this girl said they were popular and well-known around school since they were great singers and won all the teen singing competitions. She also said Scott wasn’t in school much his senior year because he was working on music stuff (and it looks like it payed off!) She and Scott are still in touch so that’s nice.” - Anonymous

Seann William Scott

“Seann William Scott went to my college (Concordia St. Paul, MN). Obviously he went there back in the day and I go there now, but all the old professors talk about how he barely ever showed up and when he did always made derogatory comments about the hispanic and among students and how he would use discussion time in class to bring up whatever he was auditioning for basically to self promo and stroke his ego.” - Anonymous

Aaron Carter

“A return to the Aaron Carter stories - my brother’s girlfriend went to one of his shows ironically and posted a selfie from the audience on Twitter and tagged him for fun - he immediately DMed her and asked her to come backstage. She said no because she has a boyfriend and he kept DMing her all night BEGGING her to come backstage, then telling her where he was and begging her to come meet him. Lmao he’s getting so desperate. Keep in mind she was barely 19 at the time.” - Anonymous

And another Aaron story:

“My friends and I went to an Aaron Carter how a few months ago. The DJ played Backstreet Boys songs before he came on. He quickly took off his shirt and wore a wife-beater the whole show and talked about being newly single. For his encore, he made a point of coming out with his Louis Vuitton monogrammed backpack on. My friends figured it was probably fake.” - Off-Anonymous

Allstar Weekend

“Don’t know if you count the dudes from Allstar Weekend, but we’re from the same neighborhood. I go to school with Nathan and he gets along well with everyone. Cameron (he ~allegedly~ dated Selena Gomez) and I worked the same summer job but at different schools. I’d see him during field trips. He’s dating girl from Echosmith now. One guy told me they got majorly screwed by Disney/Hollywood Records when they left because they never made back their money so they’re still paying it off.” - Anonymous

The Guy From Hayden Panettiere’s Wake Up Call Video

“I met Sebastian Stan the other day while out shopping and he was so so sweet! He stopped and hugged me and my friends and posed for pictures. I sadly didn’t get to see him naked.” - Anonymous

God

“I randomly met Lindsay Lohan yesterday in London. She was walking with her boyfriend and both were total sweethearts, although you could tell he was shy/not used to attention. I asked when will we get to see her again on the big screen and she said she’s working on it. Oh, and she truly looks much better in person, really fresh faced!” - Anonymous

Selena Gomez

“I work for a pretty famous stylist in NYC and I overheard her talking on the phone with the people from W Magazine that were preparing the Selena Gomez cover. My boss and the lady from W kept talking about how Selena is ‘incredibly unphotogenic’ and that she has literally no hair left, and that her budget for hair extensions is extremely high. It made me giggle, since she’s the face of Pantene.” - Anonymous

James Rodriguez

“I know for a fact that James Rodriguez cheats on his wife with a Miss Universe whenever he’s in New York. My friend has mutual friends and met him and the mistress.” - Anonymous

Demi Lovato & Avril Lavigne

“I live in Brazil but I’m American so I’m always back and forth. I was at a popular restaurant here called Fogo De Chao and while I was talking to the waiter, he said Demi Lovato had come in when she was on tour here and was drinking really heavily. I told him she was 'sober,’ and he said she drank a lot. Avril Lavigne had also gone there and wanted to leave through the backdoor when she saw fans.” - Anonymous

Timberdouche

“My friend lives in London and was at the same club as Justin Timberlake. They got really drunk and had sex. Only mentioning it because he’s married and has a kid with Jessica Biel.” - Anonymous

Kim & Kanye

“A few years back (on the Yeezus tour) my ex told me that whenever Kim and Kris traveled with Kanye they were very particular about how their smoothies were made.” - Anonymous

Justin Bieber

“Justin Bieber is basically the slut of Toronto. There’s not one club girl that doesn’t have a story. And apparently if the girl is really pretty, he doesn’t use condoms.” - Anonymous

Ben Affleck

“I met Ben Affleck at the Batman V Superman premiere in NYC and he was by far one of the nicest celebrities I’ve ever met. We talked for a couple of minutes before the movie started, which was more than I expected considering he was technically working. My seat was near his and the rest of the cast’s and he waved to me on his way out which I thought was really nice.” - Anonymous

George Clooney

“My friend worked redoing George Clooney’s house and he was so sleazy. He would wander around the house naked every time she was there to do measurements… ew.” - Anonymous

Coop

“My brother’s girlfriend was a huge fan of The O.C. and one year she went on vacation to the town where they filmed the show and she saw the cast at a restaurant and she said most of them were nice but Mischa Barton was a huge bitch and wouldn’t even take a photo with her.” - Anonymous

Emma Watson

“My old driving instructor was friends with someone who worked on the set of the Harry Potter films back in the day, and we went to go and visit set once. He said that Emma Watson was 'the nastiest bitch I’ve ever come across.’ Apparently she constantly chain smokes cigarettes, and she went up to him in the cafeteria and asked: 'What the fuck are you doing sitting in my seat?’” - Anonymous

Darcy Edwards

“I saw Shenae Grimes at my store this one time looking around. She asked for help and I told her about the deals then she rolled her eyes so hard at me (thought was kinda of rude). I mentioned her Degrassi days and then she gave me the dirtiest look. She should be happy I noticed her D-List ass.” - Anonymous

Amanda Bynes

“I study fashion product development at FIDM and while I’m not in her class, I see Amanda Bynes on campus pretty often. Towards the beginning of the term she looked a bit rough but she’s seeming better now. Occasionally people see her muttering to herself but she tries to hide it by talking into her cell phone.” - Anonymous

Dakota Fanning

“Dakota Fanning came into the bar I work a few days ago. She looks like a bloated baby. She got a few drinks and left. Less than great tipper.” - Off-Anonymous

Goop & Meryl

“My friend’s parents used to live in the same building in Tribeca as Meryl Streep and Gwyneth Paltrow. Both of them were rarely actually there, but apparently Gwyneth is super sweet and Meryl is cold and distant. I would’ve thought the other way around.” - Anonymous

TSwift & Tom Hiddleston

“As I’m sure you’re aware, Taylor Swift’s new relationship is a sham. I heard from two people who live in Rhode Island that they saw her bickering at Tom Hiddleston while he just stood there and took it. They didn’t know who he was (why would they?) and they thought he was staff of hers until they saw the beach photos.” - Anonymous

~INSIDE #DIRT~

A source of mine sent in some pre-surgery snaps of Bella Hadid:

She’s giving me Kiki Kannibal vibes in that first picture.

The source also filled me in on the fact that Bella’s had not just one, but two nose jobs - both done by Ashlee Simpson’s savior Dr. Raj Kanodia. The first was done in 2012, the second was done in 2014. And despite some reports stating otherwise, I can confirm she had to get daddy’s approval before going under the knife.

And while we’re on the subject of Before& After, a source who went to high school with Sky Ferreira sent me some cute yearbook pictures from her pre-heroin days:

They said she was a pretty cool person, too:

“I went to high school with Sky Ferreira for two years. She was a really sweet girl - a hipster before it was cool to be a hipster. She left Culver High School in Los Angeles because she was bullied/called homeless because of her 'aesthetic.’ She wasn’t on drugs at the time. Around 2009 she started leaving school a lot for recording, then I think she started doing hard stuff. She was really sweet to me, though. We used to AIM all the time about raves like Monster Massive, she was really into them. Overall, she was a really lowkey girl, not loud, just a calming presence.” - Source

Also, another interesting fact, another one of my source’s classmates is Michael Madsen’s son Christian - I guess that explains why Michael was in Sky’s Obsession video:

And a couple of parting tidbits, Ashley Tisdale’s new makeup line is tanking badly. Someone who works at the company behind the line told me that she hasn’t even hit a thousand sales and it’s been out for at least a month. I don’t know what Ashley expected - she should just go back to singing already. And another piece of gossip that I meant to share ages ago but kept forgetting - after I made my 8th & Ocean post, a crew member from the show reached out to me and spilled on the behind the scenes gossip - plot twist, there was no gossip! Apparently the cast was so insanely “boring” that several production teams tried recutting the same footage over and over again to get something interesting, and my source added that the poor camera guys almost “died of boredom” while shooting. Needless to say, a second season was off the table.

~BLIND ITEM~

Which part-time singer, full-time social climber was trying to keep a low-profile while picking up Plan B at CVS recently? And when I say low-profile, I mean the full “I’m a celebrity, please don’t notice me” uniform of sweats, sunglasses, and a baseball cap. When she finally found what she was looking for, an employee recognized the singer and asked her for a picture. Pretty soon, word spread through the store that she was in their midst and her attempts at keeping a low-profile were totally blown. Eventually, she tossed the Plan B back on the shelf and made a dash for the exit.

This blind I will be revealing, so start sending in your guesses! The first person with the right guess wins (the satisfaction of knowing you won, I’m too cheap for a prize)!

Remember, if you have a celeb story, pictures, or video, you can submit them here, here, or to popculturediedin2009@gmail.com!

Kate Moss and Jack Nicholson, 2004

StarAugust 30, 2004

On This Day In 2006 Jessica Simpson released A Public Affair. The song reached the top ten in Canada, Ireland, and Scotland and made the top twenty in the US, Australia, and the UK. It also topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. Brett Ratner directed the music video, which featured appearances by Christina Applegate, Christina Milian, Eva Longoria, Maria Menounos, Andy Dick, Brent Bolthouse, and Ryan Seacrest. The video spent nearly thirty days on the TRL countdown and peaked at #2.

Lindsay Lohan parties with friends on Long Island, November 2004

Today, Lindsay Lohan turns 30. Here’s how she celebrated her 20th birthday ten years ago:

In 2006, Lindsay ended her teen years with a massive Life & Style sponsored birthday bash in Malibu, reported to cost $100,000:

The festivities began with a Great Gatsby themed party at the Polaroid Beach House in Malibu:

Lindsay took turns behind the DJ booth with Samantha Ronson and Dustin Hoffman’s son Jake, and finished the night off with some Madonna karaoke:

Other party guests included Woody Harrelson:

Courtney Love:

Nicole Richie & Eva Mendes:

Owen Wilson, Kate Bosworth, Jeremy Piven, and of course the rest of the Lohan clan:

She continued to celebrate her milestone with a trip to Disneyland with boyfriend Harry Morton & some of her pals. But even a trip to Disney for Lindsay rakes up some controversy! Reports from that night claim that Lindsay & her pals appeared drunk & smelled like weed, and stumbled from ride to ride all night. I’m sure Mickey Mouse was pleased.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINDSAY!

StarOctober 16, 2006