Spencer Pratt’s wild reinvention: L.A. mayor bid and new memoir

Spencer Pratt is accustomed to being labeled a villain, however a extra becoming descriptor may be “cockroach.”

Evaluating the fact TV villain-turned-Snapchat star-turned-Los Angeles mayoral candidate to pestilence just isn’t meant to be an insult. As a substitute, it’s a testomony to his survival, notably in a metropolis that views its lower-tier celebs as extra wooden for the chipper. And but, regardless of each cause he has needed to vanish from the face of the Earth, Pratt not solely has endured however change into a bona-fide grasp of reinvention.

The 42-year-old Pacific Palisades native attributes his many lives to having an unparalleled quantity of power, a pressure of interior bombast that could possibly be likened to strobes of sunshine and patterns behind closed eyelids.

“My pure disposition doesn’t include an off button… It simply sits in my chest like a nuclear reactor, conserving me transferring, conserving me scheming, conserving me launching myself into the sky,” he writes in his compulsively readable new memoir, “The Man You Beloved to Hate.” “Typically I’ll land to a standing ovation. Typically I’ll face-plant in entrance of everybody. Both method, I’m enjoyable to observe. No less than, that’s what everybody retains telling me.”

Usually, the extra controversial a celeb turns into, the extra they may be inclined to cover away — no less than till individuals’s consideration has shifted. However not Pratt.

“I’ve been as public about every thing I may probably be for years,” he tells the Los Angeles Occasions about his resolution to publish a memoir.

Talking from his short-term dwelling in Santa Barbara, Pratt is sporting a Pacific Palisades T-shirt and a baseball hat emblazoned with a hot-pink, bedazzled “Heidiwood.” “However it’s so piecemeal — on this podcast or in that interview,” he continues. “And in such a fragmented world, I’d as properly nonetheless have [‘The Hills’ producer] Adam DiVello modifying my life.”

It doesn’t matter what you consider Pratt, an unapologetic lightning rod who stubbornly defies categorization, you possibly can’t argue his leisure worth. The place you recognize him from is a Rorschach check for whenever you got here of age. Millennial actuality TV junkies know Pratt greatest because the OG onscreen villain from Seasons 2 by means of 6 on the MTV juggernaut “The Hills,” which chronicled the messy, aspirational L.A. lives of younger proto-influencers from 2006 to 2010. Very on-line Gen Z-ers have little question stumbled upon Pratt’s prolific Snapchats and TikToks the place he talks about his love of hummingbirds, burritos, crystals and his spouse of 16 years (and former ‘Hills’ castmate), Heidi Montag. They’ve two kids, Gunner, 8, and Ryker, 3, who arrived on the planet earlier than and after Pratt and Montag appeared on MTV’s 2019 “Hills” reboot titled “New Beginnings” earlier than it tanked after two seasons.

Extra lately, Pratt has gained a recent following as “the man who fights for California,” due to his social media tirades towards Los Angeles metropolis officers for his or her alleged mishandling of final 12 months’s wildfires, which destroyed his and his mother and father’ Palisades properties. Although Pratt nonetheless claims to be apolitical, on the one-year anniversary of the wildfires, he introduced his plans to run for mayor.

“My voter registration is Republican, however I’m operating with no labels — no D or R subsequent to my title,” he says. “The mayor ought to serve town, not a political celebration.”

Typically, there’s an overlap in viewers. “I used to be lately in a hunting-fishing retailer with my son shopping for a fishing pole,” Pratt says. “And the man promoting the ammo was like, ‘I simply wish to inform you, I used to be telling my spouse that God actually picked the proper particular person for this struggle for California, since you had been all the time the man on that actuality present that had the receipts!’ ”

Spencer Pratt.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Occasions)

On the time of Pratt’s announcement, a rep for Mayor Karen Bass issued a scathing response, insinuating that the bid was little greater than a publicity stunt.

“It’s no shock that prematurely of his imminent guide launch, a actuality TV ‘villain’ who as soon as staged a pretend divorce to spice up scores and spent the final summer time spewing post-fire misinformation and disinformation to pump up his social media following, would now announce he’s operating for Mayor,” marketing campaign strategist Douglas Herman stated.

Responding to the allegation that his mayoral bid was an try and publicize his guide, Pratt tells the Los Angeles Occasions that every occasion occurred independently of one another, although there may be some connective tissue. After we first spoke in mid-December, Pratt had not but reached a choice to run. Later, he revealed over e-mail: “For the higher a part of 2025, I puzzled who was going to step up and problem Karen Bass within the Mayor’s race. Round Christmas Day, I spotted nobody was stepping up, and if I wished this finished, I must do it myself.

“Two issues could be true. I wrote this guide as a result of Karen Bass let my home burn down. If by means of sharing my story I may begin the method of rebuilding what we misplaced, then passing on that chance could be neglecting my duties as a husband and father. Separate and aside from that, I’m operating for Mayor as a result of Karen Bass let my home burn down and despatched me on a journey of discovery relating to her failed management.”

Political infrastructure isn’t the one system Pratt has labored exhausting to uncover. Throughout the pages of “The Man You Beloved to Hate,” which got here along with the assistance of tradition journalist and ghostwriter Caroline Ryder, he deconstructs what the memoir describes because the obligatory, wholly unregulated nature of 2000s actuality TV, which launched him and Montag to fame but in addition turned them into pariahs.

When Pratt first appeared on “The Hills” in 2006, he wasn’t precisely a stranger to actuality TV. He’d already co-created and starred on the short-lived “The Princes Of Malibu,” which ran for six episodes in 2005. This time, Pratt was forged as Montag’s Playmate-chasing boyfriend with dedication points. His earliest episodes portrayed a club-going early 20-something who, seemingly at any time when Montag’s again was turned, was chatting up different ladies.

Behind the scenes, Pratt had already fallen exhausting for Montag, who’d been forged on “The Hills” as lead protagonist Lauren Conrad’s ostensible sidekick and peer on the Trend Institute of Design & Merchandising. Pratt writes how totally taken he was with Montag, whom he first met by means of highschool buddy and “Princes” star Brody Jenner, who was then relationship “Laguna Seaside” alum Kristin Cavallari. Regardless of being head over heels for Montag (to this present day, he by no means misses an opportunity to speak up his accomplice, incomes him the Gen Z stamp of “spouse man”), Pratt was greater than prepared to meet the onscreen function of shady Casanova. He thought “The Hills” may use a shot of adrenaline that Conrad, a “Laguna Seaside” holdover (or, “Ambien in human kind,” as Pratt writes) failed to offer. Plus, it didn’t damage that the extra drama Pratt prompted, the upper his MTV paycheck.

In line with Pratt, MTV was not glad with him merely portraying an untrue boyfriend. They wished full toxicity. Pratt lists quite a few examples of extreme producer manipulation on “The Hills,” however the one which traumatized him and Montag probably the most early on was in Season 2, the place Pratt is seen berating Montag into transferring in collectively. (Offscreen, Montag was already dwelling with Pratt at his mother and father’ home within the Palisades.)

Pratt writes how govt producer Sean Travis inspired him to be “at his absolute worst right here. Present us that chilly, controlling aspect.” When Pratt expressed hesitation at this — “There’s a distinction between being a enjoyable participant and being edited into some psycho who’d emotionally torture the woman he beloved,” he writes — Pratt remembers Travis calling “The Hills” creator Adam DiVello, who Pratt remembers as “hav[ing] this supernatural capacity to control us into doing precisely what would ship most carnage.” Within the guide, Pratt alleges that DiVello would remind forged members that in the event that they adopted orders, any ranking increase may lead to appreciable monetary bonuses, amongst different juicy incentives.

When the producers didn’t get the take they desired, they’d movie it once more — and repeatedly. To the purpose the place filming a actuality present extra resembled police coercion, he says. “They’d break you by attrition,” Pratt tells me.

It’d sound ironic that for a man born and raised in Los Angeles, who matriculated amongst dozens of Hollywood nepo kids on the prestigious Crossroads College in Santa Monica, Pratt could be so unprepared for his activate digicam. However when you crack into “The Man You Beloved to Hate,” it turns into clear that whereas Pratt was all the time bold and had proximity to the wealthy and well-known, he was not born with sure layers of safety that might have shielded him from inflicting everlasting reputational harm to himself (and others).

As a toddler within the Palisades, Pratt grew up comfortably upper-middle class. His father, William “Skip” Pratt, is a dentist, and his mom, Janet, a homemaker. Pratt’s older half sibling on his mom’s aspect, Kristin, has by no means been within the highlight, however his youthful sister, Stephanie, actively courted it. (By Season 3 of “The Hills,” Stephanie Pratt had change into a sequence common and good buddy of Lauren Conrad.)

Pratt and his siblings attended the celebrated Crossroads Academy in Santa Monica, “the place the kids of Oscar winners and studio bosses realized alongside common youngsters like us,” Pratt writes. “Crossroads was the place Hollywood royalty despatched their kids to be taught that the world belonged to them. I used to be there to be taught it didn’t fairly belong to me, but.”.”

It was at Crossroads the place Pratt met his future ride-or-die Brody Jenner, the son of Olympian Caitlyn Jenner and songwriter and sweetness pageant winner Linda Thompson, and stepbrother of the not-yet-famous Kardashian sisters. Within the years following commencement, Jenner and Pratt would group as much as produce “The Princes Of Malibu,” however solely after Pratt, who was attending USC, virtually flunked a course in enterprise trigonometry. Up till that time, he’d been positive he was destined to be an excellent Wall Avenue funding banking scion.

When his enterprise college goals fell flat, Pratt turned to filmmaking, however realized that the price of getting a film off the bottom required 1000’s of {dollars}, which he didn’t have. What he did have, nevertheless, was a rarified kind of entry to the kids of well-known individuals. So Pratt offered a number of candid photographs of Mary-Kate Olsen partying at school to Us Weekly, which he’d taken from his buddy Max Winkler’s (son of Henry) bed room wall after Olsen and Winkler, who briefly dated in 2002, broke up. The picture reveal, Pratt argues within the guide, was a win-win for all concerned. He walked away with $50,000, and child-star Olsen obtained a rebellious rebrand.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt in 2009 at Perez Hilton’s thirty first party in West Hollywood.

(Matt Sayles / Related Press)

That is all to say that properly earlier than his villainous arc on “The Hills,” Pratt was prepared to cross a number of traces to get forward. Nonetheless, he had limits. The masks that producers requested him to put on was starting to eat his face.

In 2007, all hell broke free when Season 3 of “The Hills” opened with Conrad screaming at Montag that her former greatest buddy “knew what [she] did.” As extra episodes got here out, “The Hills” was bending actuality to make it seem to be Montag and Pratt had purposefully invented a rumor that Conrad had a secret intercourse tape with on-again, off-again boyfriend Jason Wahler.

The reality, based on Pratt, is extra complicated. Pratt writes how within the spring of 2007, Conrad allegedly referred to as Montag, panicking that her ex, Wahler, was threatening to launch a intercourse tape of the 2 of them. Overhearing this, Pratt texted his buddy and gossip blogger Perez Hilton to leak the tidbit, not considering it will ever come again to chew him. When the sex-tape rumor story inevitably dropped on Hilton’s weblog, and the lately launched TMZ, Speidi (as Pratt and Montag had been now recognized) grew to become enemy No. 1, not simply on the planet of MTV, however on a real world scale. (Conrad denied any intercourse tape existed on the time.)

Pratt and Montag had been rising more and more remoted. For some time, Pratt labored to monetize the detrimental consideration by calling the paparazzi on himself and Montag, who additionally agreed to elope so as to preserve themselves on “The Hills.” They wanted the cash, and with their reputations taking such a beating, this was the one supply of revenue they might actually matter on. By his last episodes, Pratt seemed to be affected by near-psychosis, clutching crystals to his brow and exploding into matches of rage, which in the end obtained him and Montag kicked off the present in the course of its last season.

After “The Hills” was canceled in 2010, Pratt and Montag shortly ran by means of all of their financial savings; in 2015, the couple declared chapter, having spent most of their $10-million web value. They jumped on a number of different actuality exhibits, together with “Celeb Huge Brother (UK)” in 2013. Pratt went again to USC to finish his undergrad diploma. Whereas there, a writing professor instructed him what he and Montag had finished on “The Hills” wasn’t trash however, somewhat, efficiency artwork.

Just a few years later, Pratt launched and ran a crystal store. He engaged with followers instantly on Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. In 2018, Taylor Swift personally invited him, Montag, and child Gunner to come back see her Repute tour as a thanks for Pratt taking part in “Look What You Made Me Do” so many instances throughout his Snapchat periods.

In January 2025, Pratt revealed that he was incomes a number of thousand {dollars} every week from the 5,000 movies on his TikTok. When final 12 months’s wildfire consumed their dwelling and belongings, the couple made round $20,000 on TikTok dwell, the place followers can donate instantly. Streams of Montag’s 2009 pop album, “Superficial,” soared. Even scripting this guide was partially a business-first resolution for Pratt, whose major aim in the mean time is to rebuild his household’s Palisades home.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt in 2025 on the premiere of “The Accountant 2” in Hollywood.

(Jordan Strauss / Invision / Related Press)

“I’m clearly very nervous, as a result of everybody needs a New York Occasions bestseller,” Pratt says. “One factor I realized with Heidi’s music is it took 15 years for everybody to be like, ‘ “Superficial” is a cult traditional.’ Although I would really like [the book] to be a No. 1 hit, I’ve realized that true artwork will possibly take extra time. … I do know that the story could be very distinctive to a time. Our aim in writing the guide was that in the future it will be taught in, like, TV movie class at USC or one thing in regards to the mixing of tradition and leisure.”

Pratt additionally says he’s wanting ahead to taking a break from speaking in regards to the wildfires as he works to advertise “The Man You Beloved to Hate.”

“I’m excited to go on discuss exhibits and simply get to really feel like a actuality star-type particular person once more,” he says. “I actually did like making Snapchats and dancing to Taylor Swift [before the fires]. Even when my life was so heavy, I didn’t take it significantly. … And now I’ve to take life so significantly, which is an actual adjustment.”

You would possibly surprise: If Pratt appears like such a damaged file as of late, why even make a bid for mayor?

Nicely, he can’t escape himself. Pratt will all the time be that obsessive man who’s considering 10 steps forward. While you dwell that method, it should be irritating when different individuals can’t sustain. “If I hear yet one more time, ‘The wheels of justice flip slowly’ ” Pratt says with a sigh. “I’m like, why? Excuse me, they don’t must. I all the time say to those individuals, ‘We’ll get new wheels.’ ”

Brodsky is an L.A. tradition and music author. Her forthcoming biography of Stevie Nicks, “Classes & Lace,” revealed by Penguin Random Home, debuts in September.