Lauren Conrad Reveals What Life Was Really Like Behind the Scenes of ‘The Hills’

Lauren Conrad has been out of the spotlight for years, and it’s been deliberate. She lives quietly in Laguna Beach with her husband and two kids, rarely posts on social media, and by her own admission has been perfectly happy without cameras in her life. So when she sits down with Kristin Cavallari on Let’s Be Honest, her admissions about her time on The Hills are worth listening to.

Lauren Conrad Gets Real About Life Behind the Scenes

Hiding wasn’t an option

During the peak years of The Hills, Conrad was one of the most photographed women in the country. And unlike a lot of celebrities at that level, she wasn’t living behind gates or protected by fancy security. Paparazzi camped outside her house; photographers even went so far as to climb trees to shoot into her bedroom window. 

“I remember I was laying out in a bathing suit,” she tells Cavallari, “and they had gone into my neighbor’s yard, climbed a wall, and were taking pictures of me.”

Getting from her front door to anywhere required its own strategy. “If I wanted to leave my house, I’d lay down in the backseat of a car,” she recalls. It was just the only way to move through the world without being followed, and the paparazzi had no respect.

Keep in mind this is all happening in her twenties, without social media as a way to control her own story or speak up. The Hills was unlike anything that had existed before it, and the culture around it was equally new territory.

The camera only got one version of her

Conrad explains that the person people saw on The Hills wasn’t the full picture. Not because the show was fake or anything, but because of the circumstances under which most of it was filmed. “Think about how they were filming,” she tells Cavallari. “A lot of it was out at nightclubs while drinking.” That’s not the entire story.

The Conrad that millions of people grew up watching (guarded, composed, occasionally tearful) was mostly captured in high-pressure social situations, on camera, often at night. The version of her that exists off camera sounds pretty different, and no one ever got to see that side of her.

“I’m definitely more relaxed when I’m not filming,” she says. “I think I’m sillier. They just never showed that.” Most likely because drama sells. And who wouldn’t be more relaxed without a camera in their face?

She spent years being one of the most watched people on television, and had almost no control over what actually aired. The show got pieces of her but never the whole thing.

But she’s made peace with it

Conrad doesn’t seem bitter about any of it. She talks about those years with a clear-eyed acceptance. While they were hard, they were formative, and they’re done. She’s built something completely different now, with a quiet life, a tight circle, kids who have no idea what any of it was.

She recalls when a TMZ photographer approached her at an airport recently. He introduced himself, noticed her kids were there, and backed off when she asked. And she was genuinely moved by it, because that’s something early 2000s paparazzi would have never done.

“If I was by myself and I ran into him again, I would absolutely talk to him,” she says, “because he was so respectful of my family and privacy.”

That’s where Conrad is now grateful for the small things, and completely uninterested in going back to the TV world. The Hills gave her a career and a platform, but leaving it gave her a life that actually feels like hers.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Let’s Be Honest wherever you get your podcasts.

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