Kristin Cavallari on Why ‘The Hills’ Felt ‘Easy’ to Film
A veteran of reality TV, Kristin Cavallari once said she found The Hills to be easier to film than Laguna Beach. Ahead, find out why the 33-year-old mother of three found that to be the case.
While Cavallari lives in Nashville, Tenn., with her husband, former NFL player Jay Culter, and runs her jewelry label, Uncommon James, while also starring in her own reality show, Very Cavallari, the world hasn’t forgotten where she started.
She starred in ‘Laguna Beach’ as a teen
Born in Denver, Colo., Cavallari moved with her family to Laguna Beach, Calif, where producers from MTV were looking for teens to cast in a reality show based on Fox’s hit drama, The O.C., a series set in Orange County about high school students.
Cavallari landed a spot on the program along with her high school boyfriend, Stephen Colletti, and his best friend, Lauren “LC” Conrad. The three of them were portrayed as the three parts to a love triangle in Laguna Beach when it premiered in 2004. Laguna Beach quickly garnered attention from viewers earning itself a firm place in the early 2000s zeitgeist during its three-season run.
Kristin Cavallari returned to MTV in ‘The Hills’
After dabbling in acting — Cavallari tried her hand and film and TV — she returned to the world of reality TV in 2010, four years after viewers watched the series finale of Laguna Beach.
She reunited with some of her Laguna Beach costars in MTV’s follow-up series, The Hills, which followed Cavallari, Conrad, as young adults navigating life in Los Angeles, Calif. The Hills ran for six seasons before coming to an end in 2010.
By then, Cavallari had become known to the public as the villain because that’s how she’d been portrayed on Laguna Beach and The Hills. But for Cavallari, the latter proved to be easier behind-the-scenes.
People on ‘The Hills’ were ‘very separate’ from her real life
In an Aug. 2018 interview with Paper Magazine, Cavallari reflected on her reality TV past. She said when she signed on for The Hills, she and her fellow castmates “weren’t really” friends, which actually proved to be a good thing. Cavallari found there to be a clear divide between what she did on The Hills and her real life.
“With The Hills, those people weren’t really in my life until I joined the show. I had known a lot of them, but they really weren’t in my circle of friends. It was very separate, which made it easy in that sense,” she said. “When I did The Hills, I knew I had to keep things separate because it’s very easy for the lines to get blurred and I didn’t like that feeling.”
She continued, saying what viewers saw on The Hills had been all for the cameras.
“We knew exactly what scenes we were going to be filming and what it was going to be about,” Cavallari said. “I had fake fights and fake relationships. I was playing up the villain and was acting essentially. I had a really great experience.”
Cavallari announced in March 2020 she’d be returning to The Hills when she makes a cameo in Season 2 of the show’s reboot, The Hills: New Beginnings. No premiere date has been announced so stay tuned for more!
