Lauren "L.C." Conrad has a simple explanation for a The Hills third-season episode that showed her on a date with male model Gavin Beasley in which one scene showed her wearing red nail polish while a subsequent shot -- presented by the show as happening the same evening -- showed her sans polish.
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"[That night], the cameras stopped rolling, and I went out to a club with [Gavin]. I went home and called [Brody Jenner], and the next day talked about it," Conrad told Entertainment Weekly during a recent interview. "[The show] was like, 'Okay, well, we need to get that on tape,' and since they're trying to tell a story the right way, I basically had to go and call [Brody] again, have the exact same conversation on camera. I mean, it's not lying to anyone, it's telling what really happened, but it's just the way they film reality shows."
In addition to casually attempting to smear other reality shows with The Hills' production practices, Conrad's comments also contradict a previous In Touch Weekly interview in which she stated "nothing was re-shot" during her date with Beasley, adding she "wasn't asked to say anything" by producers.
"We don't have writers on this show. We make our own decisions; we say what we want to say. That's who we are," Conrad told Entertainment Weekly. "People can sit back and say it's real, it's fake, but at the end of the day to me this is real because this is my life. Someone else having a lighting crew coming in to their apartment at 8 o'clock in the morning and set up booms and lights is very weird. But for me, that's real. That's how I live my life."
In fact, Conrad said the The Hills is filmed "exactly the same way" as its forefather, Laguna Beach.
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"So when people started picking out these very little things, it was weird to me because anyone who has worked on a reality show knows how they're filmed," she told Entertainment Weekly. "We're not filming The Truman Show, we don't have cameras set up all around our apartment, and they're not with us 24/7. Basically what they're doing is taking our lives and telling a story."
Conrad said one of the reasons why the show has grown such a large fan base is because The Hills basically recounts what happens in her everyday life.
"I think people are just fascinated with other people's lives in general. I mean, that's why we watch any scripted show, or when we're in high school and we gossip about other people. People are just obsessed with other people's lives," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I think we're relatable. We really are very lucky, the lives we live -- we get to live in L.A., it's very glamorous, we have great jobs, and we have a lot of fun -- but at the same time, no matter how great our lives are, we're still going to deal with the same problems as anybody else."
The 21-year-old's most popular problem among fans is her ongoing feud with The Hills co-star Heidi Montag.
"I think that's very real. It's very hard to lose someone who's the closest person to you in your life. That's a very real situation," Conrad told Entertainment Weekly. "It was very hard for me to be betrayed by someone who I loved and considered my closest friend. It's especially hard when you're in our situation right now where it's very hard to trust people -- then when you have the person you trust the most do something to you -- it's very difficult because it makes you question every relationship you have."
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While their unhappiness with each other is apparently really real, Conrad said some chance encounters between her and Montag don't always necessarily take place by chance.
"There was one incident when we showed up to a restaurant not knowing the other was going to be there, and MTV had set that up," Conrad recounted to Entertainment Weekly. "But they only set that up because it was happening off-camera -- we were getting into these situations where we were running into [Heidi and Spencer] and [MTV] kept missing them. They just wanted to put us in that same situation and see how we reacted because they didn't have it on camera."
Of course, MTV had no comment on Conrad's statements, according to Entertainment Weekly.
About The Author: Christopher Rocchio