The rest is still unwritten … or not. When The Hills first debuted in May 2006, it looked a lot different than the revival, The Hills: New Beginnings. The MTV reality show, a spinoff of Laguna Beach, followed Lauren Conrad from Laguna to Los Angeles where she moved in with Heidi Montag. Their “first friend,” who also lived in the building — and later lived with Conrad — was Audrina Patridge.
While attending the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Conrad quickly landed an internship at Teen Vogue and met fellow intern Whitney Port. Meanwhile, Montag left school shortly after the season began when she landed a job at Bolthouse Productions.
During the third episode of the season, Conrad received a call from ex-boyfriend Jason Wahler. The pair had a nasty breakup during season 2 of Laguna Beach when he kissed his ex. However, after apologizing and promising he was a new man, the pair rekindled their romance and began dating again. Meanwhile, Montag was in a relationship with Jordan Eubanks.
So, what about now? Although some of the original stars — Patridge, Montag and Port, moved on to The Hills: New Beginnings, Conrad did not. Plus, many fans were thrown off about whether the show was actually reality TV or scripted.
“All of the situations were real situations. If it was scripted, I would’ve written even better storylines,” creator and executive producer Adam DiVello told ABC in 2016. “We were doing a lot of episodes about Audrina and [her on-off boyfriend] Justin Bobby [Brescia] … tons of repeated storylines. But you can’t make up some of the things that have happened to them.”
Liz Gateley, who created Laguna Beach, added that it was a bit tougher to push stories out during The Hills.
“When we did Laguna Beach, we shot for six or seven months; February to August and we got six episodes so we had a month and a week per episode. As The Hills got more popular, the network started ordering 22 episodes and sometimes twice a year we were airing,” she shared. “We were really shooting year-round; the kids never got breaks. We had to produce an episode a week. We did push them and we did have to make more story happen in a shorter amount of time. We sort of had to figure it out as we went.”
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Scroll through the gallery below to see where the cast of The Hills is today.