Lauren Conrad, 34, and Whitney Port, 35, revealed that they still battle with “trust issues” more than a decade after filming The Hills. From the on-screen romances to friendship dramas, fans have often wondered how real the storylines were in the MTV show that aired between 2006-2010, and Whitney and Lauren touched on this controversy during the Sept. 29 episode of the Dear Media With Whit podcast. However, Whitney claimed that even the cast were made to “think things that weren’t actually happening,” and explained how this still affects her all these years later.
“One of the things that I really struggled with and sometimes I think I even struggle with it now is like…I have some trust issues because…obviously with cast and crew and like, there’s so many people from the crew like you, that I still keep in touch with and love, and don’t hold this against them. It was obviously their job, but you know, their job was to like make things out of nothing and make us think things that weren’t actually happening,” Whitney explained. And with that, the fashion designer admitted, “I feel that had an effect on me trusting other people, like you said, these were such formative years of our lives. Do you feel like that you had similar issues?”
Lauren agreed — she has. “Yeah. I, again, like my way of dealing with it, whether it was correct or not, it was just sort of like remove myself,” she told Whitney. “I have a handful of people that I’m still in touch with that I work with….And I have like, yeah, like just like a few people that, again, it’s important to have someone who understands that like weird element of me kind of, growing up.”
Regardless, Whitney insisted that the cast never presented a fake versions of themselves for the camera. “I never think that either of us made a fool out of ourselves and we were always really true to ourselves,” Whitney clarified. Her friendship with Lauren was also authentic, whom she met in the fashion closet of Teen Vogue, where they both interned at. Whitney even revealed where their relationship stands 14 years after that fateful meeting during part one of her reunion episode with LC!
Whitney earned a spin-off series from The Hills called The City, which followed the MTV star’s journey to becoming a fashion designer. While the series wrapped in 2010, she made a comeback on MTV in 2019 for the sequel The Hills: New Beginnings. Lauren didn’t join the reboot, instead opting to steer away from reality television. She is now a designer and CEO for her fashion label (named after herself), as well as the co-founder of The Little Market, which sells goods made by artisans in disadvantaged situations (such as refugees and human trafficking survivors).