<\/p>\n
Political campaign memoirs are a careful, codified genre. They\u2019re risk-averse and candor-deficient, meant as media credential and donor signal. The goals are to humanize the candidate, control the narrative and signal seriousness.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s The Guy You Loved to Hate, the new tell-all from reality TV antihero Spencer Pratt, who in January announced his run<\/a>, as a populist outsider, for the Los Angeles mayoralty. He\u2019s since taken to referring to his competitors in the race by bullying nicknames of his own coinage, in the manner of President Donald Trump, who likewise first emerged as a national sensation via the 2000s unscripted TV boom.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n The Guy You Loved to Hate may be the first time in recorded history that a political candidate has leveraged his opposition research file as a revenue stream. It debuted at No. 7 on The New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction.<\/p>\n Pratt\u2019s book traces his infamous career as a reality television star and more recent turn \u2014 after losing his house a year ago in the Palisades wildfire <\/a>\u2014 as a high-profile critic of state and local government officials. It\u2019s an entertaining read which likely won\u2019t win him many votes, candid to the point of shamelessness about the chaotic, amoral character he\u2019s long monetized, both on- and off-screen. Chapter titles include \u201cFuck Around and Find Out: Survival Strategies for the Despicable.\u201d Its thematic through-line is the rise and redemption of a self-styled villain.<\/p>\n Pratt offers no prototypical hard-luck origin story. Rather, he reveals himself to have been an ultra-coddled child. He recalls a \u201clevel of unconditional validation from my parents\u201d which \u201chardwired something dangerous into my developing brain. A sense of weapons-grade confidence, combined with the belief that desire equaled entitlement.\u201d He adds, \u201cEvery minor developmental milestone was a national event. A tooth fell out? Parade. First soccer goal? Fireworks. Every wobble forward in life was met with the kind of fanfare usually reserved for returning war heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout the book, Pratt portrays himself as an emblematic Southern California character, obsessed with crystals and burritos, New Age notions and get-rich-quick schemes, self-mythology and the power of celebrity. Like a 21st<\/sup> century analog to the ruthlessly clout-chasing Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton\u2019s The Custom of the Country, this son of a surfing dentist leveraged private-school friendships with buddies whose fathers happened to be media mogul Peter Chernin and music producer David Foster into his first TV green light \u2014 a short-lived Fox attempt at aping The Osbournes called The Princes of Malibu.<\/p>\n Pratt doesn\u2019t hide his privilege. In fact, he peacocks. After a SWAT team bursts into his house (a long story involving guns and Pomeranians), he and wife Heidi seek refuge along with her Birkins at their favored Four Seasons resort in Costa Rica. Not a likely escape plan for most of his would-be L.A. constituents.<\/p>\n At his narrative\u2019s outset, in a \u201cNote to the Reader,\u201d Pratt hams up his paranoiac streak: \u201cIf, following the publication of this book, anything happens to me \u2014 heart attack, \u2018suicide,\u2019 slip in the shower, brakes go out, fall on my head, choke on deli meat \u2026 KNOW THAT IT WAS MURDER. AND YES, PLEASE SEEK REVENGE.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Pratt provides a personal credo that would prompt many political consultants to hand in their resignations. \u201cI come from a looong line of so-called \u2018conspiracy theorists\u2019 who turned out to be dead-on accurate, because it\u2019s only a conspiracy theory until it becomes breaking news,\u201d he writes. \u201cThen, suddenly, everyone\u2019s acting like they saw it coming all along.\u201d<\/p>\n Many pages are spent on the fakery of MTV\u2019s unscripted phenomenon The Hills, on which he made his fame, as well as Heidi\u2019s well-publicized plastic surgery travails. Yet The Guy You Loved to Hate is most interested in documenting Pratt\u2019s \u201cevolution from mischievous shit-stirrer to full-blown Antichrist.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a pit stop at USC, where his fraternity pledge master was none other than Owen Hanson, the future international drug kingpin who was recently the subject of Amazon\u2019s docuseries Cocaine Quarterback: \u201cHe tried to beat me with a paddle until I finally snapped.\u201d There\u2019s Pratt\u2019s recollection of first bonding with friend and future The Hills castmate Brody Jenner: \u201cHe was surprisingly good at psychological warfare, which I respected.\u201d Along the way, he opens up about everything from his hypervigilance about hygiene (\u201cI\u2019m a Howard Hughes-level germaphobe\u201d) and blackmailing his father as a preteen by recording the elder Pratt yelling at him for kicking a soccer ball at his sister\u2019s face (\u201cWhat if your patients heard this? The dental board?\u201d) to his experience with cocaine (\u201cVerdict? Meh. I don\u2019t need blow. I am blow. My natural state is already dialed to eleven.\u201d)<\/p>\n Pratt also revisits his past rumormongering of an alleged sex tape involving The Hills star Lauren Conrad \u2014 she denied it \u2014 and how, years earlier, he sold a friend\u2019s pictures of Mary-Kate Olsen partying for some quick cash. \u201cDesperate times, desperate measures,\u201d he explains. \u201cWhen you really think about it, it was a win-win. Mary-Kate got her rebel rebrand.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point in his tale, Pratt recalls meeting Rob Blagojevich, the disgraced ex-governor of Illinois, on the set of their jungle-survivalist competition series I\u2019m a Celebrity\u2026 Get Me Out of Here. Not long out of prison, Blagojevich told him, \u201cKid, stay out of politics. It\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n Apparently, Pratt didn\u2019t listen. Much of his nascent mayoral campaign has focused on sincere, outraged messaging about governmental fraud and waste. Yet it\u2019s unclear how someone so untested in a leadership role \u2014 of any sort \u2014 expects to oversee the city of Los Angeles\u2019 $14 billion annual budget. Particularly since, by his own admission, he hasn\u2019t been a forward-thinking steward of even his own household finances.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since I\u2019d met Heidi, every dollar that came in, we\u2019d spent right away,\u201d he recalls in the book. \u201cThat\u2019s just how we rolled. No savings account, no backup plan, just direct deposit and vibes. Because what\u2019s money, really? Just energy moving in and out of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n Billionaire L.A. developer Rick Caruso, the former Republican who lost to Bass in the 2022 mayoral election and had been seriously weighing a rematch, told<\/a> The Hollywood Reporter on Feb. 6 that he thought Pratt was \u201ca very well-intended guy\u201d but \u201cwe\u2019ve had somebody that didn\u2019t have the experience to run the city, so I think experience is really important on knowing how to manage a job like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Reading The Guy You Loved to Hate is, if nothing else, certainly an experience. Even if Pratt fails in his political bid, he\u2019ll no doubt have garnered enough colorful material for a fresh final chapter in the paperback edition.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Political campaign memoirs are a careful, codified genre. They\u2019re risk-averse and candor-deficient, meant as media credential and donor signal. The goals are to humanize the candidate, control the narrative and signal seriousness. Then there\u2019s The Guy You Loved to Hate, the new tell-all from reality TV antihero Spencer Pratt, who in January announced his run, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2277614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[22389,34395,441059,24122,441058,43174,441060],"class_list":["post-2277613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-donald-trump","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-political-campaign","tag-reality-tv","tag-rob-blagojevich","tag-spencer-pratt","tag-unscripted-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/LA-Mayoral-Candidate-Spencer-Pratts-Memoir-is-a-Book-Length-Oppo.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277615,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277613\/revisions\/2277615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}