In the spring of 2006, when The Hills—a reality-TV show about the lives of privileged young adults living in Los Angeles—premiered on MTV, Spencer Pratt wasn’t part of the cast. Instead, he was sitting at home, watching with his mom and her best friend. His first impression? “The Hills was aggressively boring,” he writes in his aptly titled memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate. “Like watching paint dry, except the paint was really pretty and had perfect lighting.”Pratt, who was then in his early 20s, was no stranger to reality TV. He had previously appeared on The Princes of Malibu, a short-lived Fox show about Brody and Brandon Jenner—the handsome, wavy-haired sons of the Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner and the songwriter Linda Thompson. After watching The Hills, Pratt soon realized that the two shows shared an executive producer, Sean Travis. As Pratt tells it, he called Travis up, asking—or, more precisely, demanding—that he and Brody be cast on the next season. When they were rebuffed, the duo started showing up at the Hollywood nightclubs where the Hills cast was filming, over and over again. Pratt eventually got on the show when he started dating Heidi Montag, the party-loving roommate of Lauren Conrad, the central character whose unmistakable Californian drawl narrated the series. He immediately cemented himself as an agitator who was always willing to stir up drama by fighting with the other cast members and even with his own family, disrupting the show’s low-key vibe and turning it into addictive viewing.Twenty years on, Pratt is once again a figure who can’t be ignored: an insurgent challenger to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s reelection bid. Pratt, a registered Republican, has positioned himself as an anti-establishment voice prepared to take a tough approach on homelessness, drug “zombies,” and crime, and he is currently polling a strong second in L.A.’s nonpartisan mayoral-primary election. His campaign, which was inspired by the experience of losing his Palisades home in the 2025 California wildfires, is infused with the same shamelessness and media savvy that made him a TV star. He’s new to politics, but he’s been playing this game for years.In 2007, when Pratt first infiltrated The Hills as Montag’s love interest, he had a specific goal. “I want to be the most hated person in the world,” he said, according to Brody Jenner. By this point, reality-TV viewers had already become acquainted with villains such as Richard Hatch, who won the first season of Survivor by playing a devious, Machiavellian game, and Omarosa Manigault Newman, whose ruthless takedowns of other contestants on The Apprentice earned her an equal amount of fans and haters. But although The Hills wasn’t a game show, Pratt understood that the cast members were competing for airtime and column inches in a world where traditional “talent” was no longer a prerequisite for fame.Pratt’s outrageous on-screen antics placed him at the center of many feuds. He often spoke aggressively with Montag’s family—especially her mother, Darlene, and her sister, Holly, who disapproved of their relationship. He severed ties with his own sister, Stephanie, whom he called a “crazy bitch” at a barbecue. (In February, she said that voting for him in the mayoral race would be a “vote for stupidity,” though she signaled her support in a recent Vanity Fair article.) Some of his most disturbing fights were with Montag, and fans accused him of being controlling, like when he pressured his now-wife to elope without her family present. (Pratt has since said that many of their fights, and instances when he exhibited controlling behavior, were faked “to make producers happy.”)Yet his most intense beef was with Conrad, the show’s biggest star. When Pratt first started dating Montag, Conrad was a protective friend unimpressed with his antics, such as partying with other girls. But ahead of the show’s third season, their feud went nuclear when reports of a sex tape between Conrad and her former boyfriend Jason Wahler began to circulate online. Conrad, who has always denied the existence of a tape, blamed Pratt for leaking the story. (Pratt initially denied this, then admitted to it, then denied it again—then, eventually, admitted to it again.) The feud continued to play out for years after The Hills ended; in 2015, Pratt branded Conrad “a cold-hearted killer” who will “cut you in your sleep.”[Read: The cruel social experiment of reality TV]We now know that many storylines on The Hills were heavily embellished by producers or the stars themselves. Many scenes were reshot and, toward the end, some central plot points were totally invented. But by all accounts, the feud between Pratt and Conrad was real, and it’s where Pratt honed what he describes as his default conflict style: “If you want to throw missiles, I’m throwing a nuke.” Fans of The Hills might get déjà vu, watching the way he has conducted himself in the mayoral race. Pratt has relentlessly positioned Bass at the center of his doomsday-like vision of L.A. as a lawless and unsafe place. Not long after he kicked off his campaign, he gave her the nickname Karen “Basura,” the Spanish word for “trash,” and predicted that she’ll end up in jail.Defeating an opponent, whether in politics or on reality TV, is largely about narrative control. It’s become common for reality stars and politicians alike to use many channels—social media, podcasts, press coverage—to influence how they’re perceived. In the pre-Instagram era, Pratt and Montag were known for constantly leaking stories to the tabloids, setting up paparazzi pictures, and surprising producers by showing up where they weren’t expected. The couple embraced new-media figures such as the notorious blogger Perez Hilton, who reported the story about Conrad’s alleged sex tape, and who was later a guest of honor at Pratt and Montag’s 2009 wedding. Since Pratt entered the mayoral race, his campaign has been disseminating bizarre spoof videos and AI-generated ads. He’s even running a “clipping campaign,” paying content creators to promote his videos.Before the election of Donald Trump, reality stardom would have been a political hindrance—but no more. And Pratt’s experience might even have given him an edge, in ways beyond the obvious: On The Hills, he and his co-stars were likely encouraged by producers to distill their points into concise, easy-to-edit sound bites. Viewers could see hints of this at the May 6 mayoral debate, when Pratt was more inclined than his opponents to give simple “yes” or “no” answers to questions—a trait that was immediately amplified by Fox News. Reality stardom has also given Pratt something that most career politicians would kill for: name recognition. Even if a lot of people hated him on The Hills, they still may feel like they know him and therefore have an incentive to stop scrolling and listen to what he’s saying.Pratt’s TV background also allows him to position himself as an outsider, even if that isn’t totally true. Certainly, he has no shortage of high-level connections. In May, the musician David Foster and his wife, Katharine McPhee Foster, held a fundraiser for Pratt, hosting wealthy donors, influencers, and Hollywood figures at their home. Foster has known Pratt ever since The Princes of Malibu. In fact, Pratt has said that it was Foster who encouraged him to be the “Simon Cowell of The Hills” way back when, as in someone who tells it like it is. At the time, this quality made him a villain. Now he has cast himself as the only candidate prepared to deliver hard truths on behalf of the silent majority.Looking ahead to the June 2 primary, I wonder how much of Pratt’s rise is driven by a rose-tinted nostalgia among Angelenos for the era in which he became famous. As he promises to make L.A. “camera-ready” again, he may unconsciously remind people of the simpler time when The Hills started airing, before the first iPhone and the financial crash. In 2006, The Hills felt genuinely novel. Like its predecessor, Laguna Beach, it was shot and edited to look and feel like a scripted show, except the people and events were (supposedly) real. Young fans like me weren’t put off by the scenes that seemed obviously fake—in fact, part of the appeal was watching and making up your own mind about whether or not it was scripted.There’s a symmetry between Pratt’s campaign and the broader moment, in which the media landscape looks more and more like reality TV. Every day, keeping up with the news means trying to decipher whether information is based in fact or not—and whether a politician, influencer, or public figure really believes what they’re saying, or is just trying to go viral. Does Pratt really want to be mayor of L.A.? Or is he using his campaign to reignite his fading stardom and promote his memoir? Is Pratt actually living in a trailer, as he has claimed, or is he staying in a luxury hotel? As on The Hills, audiences are once again being asked to decide what is real.Not so long ago, Pratt seemed down-and-out and was selling crystals to make a living. Now he’s within the margin of error for taking an outright lead in the race. In his memoir, he reflects on how he found his footing on The Hills. “Once I see an opportunity, I’m like a shark in the water, a dog with a bone,” he writes. “I see what I want. I take it.” The key difference is how much the stakes have risen. Two decades ago, Pratt’s unnerving talent for getting as much attention as possible secured him a spot on a TV show. Today, the reward might be city hall.