A deep dive into the reality TV lore of the L.A. mayoral contender.
Until four months ago, Spencer Pratt was best known as the churlish reality TV boyfriend from “The Hills” who, for the past two decades, has stayed laser-focused on being famous. A certain cohort of late-aughts MTV viewers know way too many details about him.
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He is now a leading candidate to serve nearly 4 million people as Los Angeles mayor, on the ballot for today’s so-called “jungle primary.” After an influx of campaign cash and a better-than-expected debate performance, his long-shot, short-term campaign is getting the Time to Take Him Seriously media treatment.
We’ve been here before, with a different reality TV candidate: President Donald Trump also had never before held public office and was initially written off by the mainstream media and party poobahs. Pratt, 42, a registered Republican running as an independent, has used the Trump playbook of trolling and insulting his closest opponents, incumbent Karen Bass and city council member Nithya Raman. The latest polls show the contest is tight.
We — two millennials who came of age in the peak MTV reality show era — have prepared a Pratt Primer, and will take on your questions about everything, including the Mayan apocalypse and the healing crystals.
Pratt, a Los Angeles native, was a student at the University of Southern California in the early 2000s when he realized the potential of the burgeoning “reality TV” genre. So he pitched an unscripted show centered on his pal Brody Jenner, a spoiled rich kid who was constantly irritating his stepdad, Grammy-winning producer David Foster (then married to Jenner’s mother, the songwriter and Elvis girlfriend Linda Thompson, who happened to be the ex-wife of Caitlyn Jenner, Brody’s parent). With us so far?
“Princes of Malibu,” set at Foster’s $40 million estate, ran for six episodes — and Foster labeled Pratt as his stepson’s “weaselly friend” in the first few minutes of the pilot.
Well, a rumor about a sex tape, and not his. We’ll get to that in a sec.
Being a prince of Malibu was nothing compared to “The Hills,” the MTV reality hit from 2006 to 2010 that revolved around a group of 20-somethings trying to figure out life and love. The series followed some of the beautiful and dramatic high school kids we met in the hit “Laguna Beach,” including one of its stars, Lauren Conrad. Pratt made his grand entrance in Season 2 as the boyfriend of Heidi Montag, Conrad’s best friend.
Spencer drove a wedge between the two women as Heidi spent more time with him. Then he became public enemy No. 1 because of an explosive narrative: Lauren’s belief that Heidi and Spencer started a rumor that she made a sex tape with her ex-boyfriend. While “The Hills” cast has since admitted that many storylines were manipulated by producers, the hurt feelings over this situation seemed real. Lauren and Heidi’s friendship imploded, leading to Lauren famously yelling at Heidi, “You KNOW what you did!” (Eventually, Spencer and Heidi got married and Lauren attended the wedding, which was featured in Season 5.)
Pratt later confessed to starting the rumor, then backtracked and said his confession was a lie. A recent Vanity Fair story reported he maintains that he was the fall guy for the feud that boosted the profile of the show.
Pratt is still married to Montag, and together they are “Speidi.” In 2009, Montag famously underwent 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day at age 23, including a chin reduction, breast augmentation and ear pinning (not televised). The couple has two children, Ryker and Gunner.
Montag tried to pivot from “The Hills” to a music career; she and Pratt poured their money from the show into her 2010 debut album, “Superficial,” but it only sold about 1,000 copies its first week.
Not long after, Montag announced she was dropping Pratt as her manager in favor of a psychic. And Speidi said they were getting a divorce. But then: The split was a stunt, they said.
So much more. Speidi has parlayed their reputation as chaos agents into appearances on NBC’s 2009 reality competition “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!” after which a network executive publicly slammed the duo as “insincere, lazy, entitled” and “everything that’s wrong with America.”
And: WE TV’s “Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars”; two seasons of the “Celebrity Big Brother” in the U.K.; and Fox’s “The Masked Singer” this year.
Pratt also became an expert in staging and selling paparazzi photos of himself and his wife.
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Where should we begin? Pratt has a business selling crystals, which he believes have healing powers. (In 2018, he told Dazed that he believes a $15,000 piece of sugilite crystal alleviated his wife’s plastic surgery pain.) He estimated that his personal crystal collection was worth $1 million.
He and his wife also spoke about believing in a 2012 doomsday prophecy about the Mayan calendar, and spending $10 million on cars, gifts and dining out because they believed the end of the world was nigh. “We thought, we have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits,” Pratt told British tabloid OK! Magazine.
Pratt has also rapped on his wife’s records, and once called himself the “White Jay-Z.” He was, at one point, trying to sell a reality show about cannabis. He really likes hummingbirds.
The Pratts’ family home, a $2.5 million dollar mansion in Pacific Palisades, burned down in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. He documented the loss on social media (Yes, he lost much of the crystal collection), and said his family could not afford to rebuild despite an insurance payout. Pratt maintains that Bass’s leadership contributed to the devastation and is one of more than 20 families and property owners that filed suit against the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Pratt launched his campaign on the anniversary of the wildfires, and told Vanity Fair that his initial objective was to “damage” Bass “as much as possible.” Recently, he reposted a fan-generated AI video that cast him in the role of Batman — “Prattman,” if you will — and Bass, Kamala Harris and other Democrats as his enemies. It’s gotten a lot of people buzzing about how artificial intelligence will be used in campaigns.
After the fire, Pratt placed an 33-foot Airstream trailer on his property, and has featured it prominently in his campaign, saying he lived there. But TMZ later reported that he was actually living at the luxurious Hotel Bel-Air. Pratt has said his security team encouraged him to leave the trailer. He briefly revived his rap career, dropping a parody diss track about Bass based on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
Pratt’s wife and children are living outside Los Angeles, in Carpenteria, Calif., the LA Times reported.
He has a website for that. (Short answer: Emergency preparedness, clearing homeless encampments, reducing red tape for entrepreneurs, and city beautification, to name a few of his key ideas.)
Trump thinks so. “I heard he’s a big MAGA person,” the president recently said.
But not by Pratt’s account. And his personal beliefs don’t align neatly with MAGA’s core tenets: He supports transgender rights. He recently posted: “I don’t want ICE in LA, nobody wants ICE in L.A.” He has compared himself to President Barack Obama, and identifies as a community activist. (Pratt’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this and other topics covered in this FAQ.)
However: His campaign is being run by Republican operatives, the Hollywood Reporter reported. He told CNN that he became a Republican because of his desire to obtain a concealed weapon permit. And he has previously voted for Trump.
An array of manosphere podcasters, including Adam Carolla and Joe Rogan, and celebrity friends of his, including Paris Hilton and fellow “Hills” stars Kristin Cavallari and Audrina Patridge. Dennis Quaid is reportedly rooting for him. And David Foster has gotten over the “Princes of Malibu” drama so much that he held a fundraiser for Pratt at his home. (A viral video shows Foster playing piano as his wife, “American Idol” star Katharine McPhee, sings a cover of Tina Turner’s “The Best” with revised lyrics celebrating Pratt.)
Elsewhere, “Price is Right” host Drew Carey deemed Pratt a “serial scammer without a soul or moral compass,” while comedian Chelsea Handler recorded a video that unfavorably compared Pratt to Trump. Former “Real Housewives” star Lisa Rinna said she did not support Pratt, either. “I’m a reality person. You wouldn’t want me as mayor,” she added. Jimmy Kimmel recently ripped into Pratt on his show: “You think this guy wants to sit through city council meetings all day talking about zoning?” the host asked. “No. He wants to be a star again. And guess what? It’s working. He’s everywhere.”
“I keep being called a reality star, but I’m the only candidate living in reality,” Pratt quipped to NBCLA. ABC7 pressed Pratt on his connection to Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and InfoWars founder who hosted the couple on his show in 2017. Pratt pushed back, saying he’s done a lot of “stupid things” in his life but “after they let my house burn down and my parents’ house burn down, I’m a different person.”
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Yes.
