Once upon a time — well, in 2007 — Lauren Conrad was more famous than Kim Kardashian.
As viewers witnessed during Tuesday’s “The Hills: That Was Then, This Is Now” special, the future sex-tape star was cut from an episode of MTV’s beloved reality show in Season 3.
In the never-before-seen clip, Kardashian and stepbrother Brody Jenner attend the housewarming party of “Hills” co-stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. As Montag mingles with party guests, she and Kardashian strike up a conversation about her pet jellyfish.
“These are our jellyfish. We’re the only people in America to have jellyfish,” Montag says. Kardashian replies, “That is really cool.”
While Kardashian and Jenner then discuss plans for Memorial Day weekend, it’s no wonder her snooze-worthy cameo wound up on the cutting-room floor. Especially considering the drama swirling among the cast at the time — whether contrived or not.
As Conrad elaborated during the hourlong special, her “romance” with Jenner was about as real as Montag’s size-F implants.
“I definitely had a crush on Brody, but the funny thing was we had zero chemistry,” she says. “He was my friend. I enjoyed spending time with him, but it just always felt forced.”
Although she and Jenner kissed quite a bit on camera, the then-single Conrad let the producers work their magic behind the scenes.
“We knew the cameras were making it look like more than it was, and there was so much pressure on me at that point to get a boyfriend or date someone who was willing to film that I just sort of let them do whatever they wanted,” Conrad said.
While the authenticity of “The Hills” was questioned throughout the show’s six-season run, Conrad will never forget a pivotal moment from Season 2 when she encountered ex-boyfriend Jason Wahler, who long battled substance abuse.
“After we went on a break from filming, it was like a couple weeks in, I finally decided to end things. We broke up,” Conrad says. “I said, ‘You have three days to get your stuff out, I’m having the locks changed on Monday.’ So when I saw Jason that day, it was the first time I had seen him since we had broken up. It was really hard. What made it harder was I could see he wasn’t sober.”
Wahler has since gotten clean, yet Conrad admits she still felt responsible for his well-being even after their breakup.
“That really broke me, because I felt responsibility to take care of him, and I felt like, when we broke up, I was abandoning him,” Conrad said. “Because there were a lot of nights that I was getting 2 a.m. phone calls and I had to go pick him up passed out in the back of a club. So I was like, ‘Who is doing that now?’ I know he doesn’t have friends who are doing it. . . I was like, ‘Oh, God, no one is taking care of him.’”
Both Conrad and Wahler found their happy endings away from reality TV, with William Tell and Ashley Slack, respectively, but as the “Laguna Beach” alumna shares, she rarely looks back to the past.
“The show isn’t something I like to relive. I don’t go back and watch the show,” Conrad says. “For me, it doesn’t always bring back the best memories.”
Despite the heartache and hardships, Conrad would do the show again.
“Knowing what I know now, looking back, I would absolutely do it again,” she said. “It brought me so much good to my life. While it was hard last time, it brought me to a place where I’m really happy and get to do what I love.”