Spencer Pratt Will Still Play the Villain—for the Right Price

Twenty years after The Hills premiered on MTV, Spencer Pratt is back in the headlines. But this time, he insists he’s not the bad guy.  

In his new book, The Guy You Love to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain, Pratt details how he turned being despised into a career and explains why you can’t trust everything you see on TV. He also outlines his decision to take on his latest role, Los Angeles mayoral candidate, in the wake of the devastating 2025 Palisades wildfire.

Back when he joined The Hills in its second season, Pratt was determined to stir up conflict and agitate castmates. The show, which was a spin-off of Laguna Beach, centered around Lauren Conrad and her friends as they navigated life in L.A. while Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” played over shots of sunsets and the Hollywood sign. Now, Pratt is hoping to make a new name for himself in his hometown by running for mayor to challenge the status quo with a platform aimed at accountability, emergency readiness and a treatment-first approach to ending homelessness. Earlier this month, Pratt announced his run on the one-year anniversary of losing his home in the Pacific Palisades fire. 

“The idea of every single thing you’ve ever acquired, whether it’s a photo, a memento, anything you bought, just wiped away in one day, it’s a real reset,” he told Newsweek in an interview.

When he started digging into how the fire started and what made it so destructive, something wasn’t adding up, in his eyes. He turned his frustration into advocacy and began posting on social media about what he believes to be years of mismanagement from city and state officials. Pratt is running against incumbent Karen Bass, whose approval rating hangs in the low 40s, according to CalMatters.

The Los Angeles Times recently called the Palisades fire “a defining issue” in the mayoral race. Pratt writes in his book that his candidacy is more than a political campaign; it’s a mission to expose a failed system and “shed light on the darkest corners of L.A. politics.”  

“The reason why I ever wanted to be famous is because L.A. was a dream, Hollywood was a dream. I grew up in that,” he said, adding that the L.A. of his youth was a “utopia.”

“I got my little bubble, but they burned my bubble down, so now I have to fight for all of L.A.,” he said. “If I was a better Angelino, I would have been doing this a long time ago, but I obviously wanted to be a simple entertainer.” 

In addition to The Hills, Pratt and his wife, The Hills co-star Heidi Montag, appeared on several other reality TV shows, like Celebrity Big Brother UK and I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. For most of the early 2000s, the couple, known as Speidi, dominated tabloids with reports of blowups with castmates, relationship drama and near-fatal plastic surgeries.

Pratt told Newsweek that when he originally entered the spotlight, he was intent on crafting a TV persona that was inspired by the bad boyfriends in ’80s movies with a little bit of Robert De Niro in Heat.

“I didn’t know you could just exist on a show. I thought you had to make drama,” he said. “I went in with mercenary energy.” 

Pratt grew up in the Pacific Palisades and attended the University of Southern California to study business, with aspirations of becoming an investment banker. But after receiving his first D in a class, he realized he wasn’t suited for a life of drudging through Excel spreadsheets.  

In the early 2000s, reality TV shows like The Real World, Big Brother and Survivor were captivating audiences by depicting how strangers interact when they are forced into uncomfortable circumstances. Beyond competition shows, there was a new subsection of the genre emerging, focused on the personal lives of the rich and famous.  

Inspired by The Osbournes, Pratt pitched MTV executives on a show about his best friend, Brody Jenner, and his family called The Princes of Malibu. But the show only lasted one season, forcing Pratt back to USC. 

“I was just supposed to be rich and famous, I have my own network television show, Target and McDonald’s were my sponsors, and now I’m back in class,” he said.  

One day, while watching the first season of The Hills, Pratt noticed his former showrunner’s name in the credits. Pratt immediately called him and demanded that he get on the cast.  

“I was like, ‘That’s my show, you get my camera ready,’” he said. 

As the villain and love interest to Montag, Pratt became a chaos agent on the show that stirred conversations and drove viewership. In fact, in his book, Pratt says that MTV Executive Vice President Tony DiSanto told him that he and Montag saved the show from cancellation early on.  

But with that attention came a pressure to perform that pushed Pratt to his limits in the name of making good TV. Throughout his book, Pratt details several instances when the scenes audiences saw onscreen were not entirely real—including some of his most iconic blowups. 

Pratt said viewers just had to check the show’s credits to see how many story producers and script writers worked on each episode.  

“I thought it was pretty obvious, but I learned the hard way people take [the show] very seriously,” he told Newsweek.  

According to Pratt, several scenes were scripted, heavily directed, pushed to exaggeration by producers or dubbed over in an ADR booth weeks after filming. 

But something he didn’t expect was the “Frankenbiting,” a term for when editors splice together different pieces of dialogue over unrelated shots to create a situation that often looks worse than the reality.

For example, Pratt said there was a scene where he was on the phone with Montag, but it was edited to look like he was saying those things to another castmate, Audrina Patridge, which creates an entirely different context that he said, “makes it look so crazy.”

Even if people hated him on the show, he said fans still stopped him at restaurants asking for a picture.  

“With my ego, I know these people hate me and are texting their friend like, ‘oh he’s the worst, he’s a monster,’ but I still love taking the photos,” he said.  

His “I made it” moments came when his face was next to movie stars in tabloids and when a car of teenage girls yelled at him while he was outside a cafe in the Palisades.  

“That one negative was such a pump-up because to have people recognize you driving by and yell out the window, I was like, ‘I’m Eminem now,’” he said. 

But the weight of always being the bad guy started to take a toll on Pratt. If he didn’t play his part, Pratt said producers threatened to edit him out of episodes, which meant he wouldn’t get paid. 

He told Newsweek that at the beginning of each season, there would be a discussion with producers about redemption arcs that never came. Pratt eventually learned that he wasn’t a collaborator or co-producer; he was, as he sees it, just another exploited talent. 

In his book, Pratt says by season six of The Hills, it felt like producers were pushing him and Montag to their limits to get more fights, more meltdowns and “more bridges burned.” He remembers one producer he called “the Collector” because “it felt like her job was to dismantle us psychologically, piece by piece, until she collected the shot.” 

“I thought I was the puppet master when I was just getting played as a puppet,” he told Newsweek. “It just always felt so dirty. That’s why my character became more method because now [I] hate production. They’re despicable. You start looking at them as monsters trying to make you look bad.” 

Pratt said he was “blessed with the old media world” at the height of his fame, with no comment sections to doomscroll through. But he said he still internalized and projected the negativity he received outside the show.  

Toward the end of his book, Pratt notes that “the culture finally caught up” with The Hills cast as they’re being reevaluated by a new audience as pioneers of the “internet-age celebrity economy.”  

In today’s age, when social media influencers are reality stars and reality stars are social media influencers, it is rare to find true authenticity on screen. Contestants on Love Island or The Bachelor face allegations of not being there “for the right reasons.” Even if they don’t make it to the final rose ceremony, they still leave the show with a surge in Instagram followers and brand deals with Pepsi. And your favorite “get ready with me” creator on TikTok? They are now suddenly doing their makeup routine with exclusively L’Oreal products.

The short-lived reboot of only ran for two seasons on MTV from 2019 to 2021. At the time, Pratt had earned a newfound likability with his audience on Snapchat, where he featured hummingbird sanctuaries and his business selling crystals. Pratt was optimistic about the reboot after seeing the success of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. But he wrote in his book that The Hills: New Beginnings felt like a “toxic family reunion.” In addition to COVID-19 interrupting production, Pratt said the show could never last with a cast that was too guarded and image-conscious.  

“I think the problem now is image crafting,” he said. “Somebody goes on a reality show, they’re in their head trying to do an [Instagram] story and what filters are they putting it on, what lenses, metaphorically speaking.” 

Whether he’s on TV or social media, Pratt insists he’s being authentic, adding that he can be real because “that’s who I’ve always been—thankful to be a little more famous.” 

But he wouldn’t recommend chasing fame on reality TV these days, noting that there’s little money in it. If anyone wants to pursue it, he recommends trying to have fun, “and keep your day job.” 

When asked if he’d back a return to reality TV on a show like The Traitors, Pratt said he’d rather use TikTok. That way, he can make more money and “not risk being edited in a bad way.”  

“I would have never become a villain on reality TV if it pays what it pays now,” he said. “I said no to both seasons of House of Villains because I don’t identify as a villain anymore. And you’re not paying me enough to jump back into that role.” 

But then he quickly backtracked. “But, again, if anybody knows the producers, I will. If you find the right budget.”

If any producers from Peacock are reading, Pratt said he is available, but “we have to do it quick though, I’m about to be mayor.” 

So what makes “the guy you love to hate” the right choice to lead Los Angeles? Pratt said he “would much rather not be doing any of this,” but he feels a higher calling to advocate for his community.  

“People think I operate on rage, which I do have a ton of rage, but I also channel that emotion of pain and hurt that people are not feeling acknowledged and were just left to burn,” he said.

And if he doesn’t win the mayoral race, Pratt said he’s not stopping his mission to expose government inefficiencies in the city.  

“If I don’t win mayor, I’m not stopping,” he said. “People say [I’m] just doing this for the book, that the storyline ends when this book tour ends. And when I’m still doing this same journey five years from now, they’re gonna look stupid.”