David Foster — yes, as in the record producer who has worked with the likes of Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand — is responsible for the rise of a notorious reality TV villain from the early aughts.
Spencer Pratt, best known for antagonizing Lauren Conrad and co. on The Hills, appeared on the latest episode of SiriusXM’s The Julia Cunningham Show to chat about his unexpected turn in reality television. Pratt never intended to pursue a career on screen, but according to him, it was Foster, a former costar, who encouraged him to fully embody the “bad guy.”
Pratt’s reality TV journey began with 2005’s The Princes of Malibu, a reality show he co-created with friends Brody and Brandon Jenner; it centered on the lives of the pampered Jenner brothers. Fed up with their freeloading lifestyles, the brothers’ stepfather Foster, who was previously married to their mother Linda Thompson before separating in 2005, force them to get jobs and straighten out their lives.
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Pratt, who was also an executive producer on the show, told Cunningham he was “hijacked” into appearing in front of the camera to “stir up” drama. “I joke it’s like The Matrix — I didn’t realize I was taking the pill,” he quipped. “And then once I was in, I was like, ‘Too late.’ I didn’t think about it and that moment did change my life forever because nobody ever took me seriously again. Nowadays there’s a Kim K who has been able to be a reality personality and an actor.”
“Good for her, you know, but that was impossible [back then], so I kind of just accepted what I got into, and then David Foster, he was like, ‘You need to be the Simon Cowell of reality TV,'” Pratt continued. “And I didn’t even watch American Idol. I didn’t even know who Simon Cowell was. I was like, ‘What? What does that mean? What are you talking about?’ He’s like, “Be the bad guy. Be the villain.'”
Andrew Southam/Fox
Brody Jenner, Brandon Jenner, Linda Thompson, and David Foster in a promotional photo for ‘The Princes of Malibu’
What Foster failed to “explain to me though,” Pratt added, was that Cowell’s antagonistic behavior was “grounded in, ‘I’m trying to tell you you’re not talented because it’s just the truth,'” he said. “The problem with me being blunt and doing whatever producers wanted is the audience doesn’t see [it as], ‘He’s just telling it how it is.’ It’s just, ‘He’s a monster.’ So that’s what I didn’t see looking back. People, they took it very serious.”
Pratt rose to prominence as the boyfriend (and now-husband) of Heidi Montag on The Hills, which ran for six seasons between 2006 and 2010. He also returned to the short-lived 2019 revival The Hills: New Beginnings. Pratt most recently appeared on The Masked Singer and Got to Get Out.
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