How Spencer Pratt went from reality TV villain to TikTok star
Spencer Pratt was one of the first reality TV villains, but now he’s stolen the internet’s hearts.
Pratt made his name on MTV show The Hills. And after years out of the spotlight (bar reprising his role in a The Hills reboot in 2019), he has made an unlikely comeback. It started when the home he shares with wife Heidi Montag burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire, which ripped through Los Angeles earlier this month.
Pratt’s unfiltered TikToks documenting his life in the aftermath of the fire have earned him legions of new fans, who have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and even sent Heidi’s 2010 album to number one in the US charts. Their return to the limelight is one of the great reality TV redemption arcs following a decade of relative obscurity.
Earning reality villain status in The Hills
The Hills ran from 2006 to 2011 and followed the lives of four women in their twenties while they were living in one of Los Angeles’ most affluent neighbourhoods. Pratt entered the show as the boyfriend of Heidi Montag, and the pair quickly became a troublemaking duo. They fell out with their castmates for spreading salacious rumours and were accused of leaking false stories to the press. The couple were willing to go the extra mile to make good TV, with Montag famously getting ten plastic surgery procedures in a day in one episode.
Pratt had anger management issues and was eventually kicked off the show for threatening to kill a producer.
Trying to live like Bey and Jay
The Hills was cancelled after six seasons, and “Speidi”, as they became known, quickly frittered away the millions they had earned. "Every time we'd go out to eat, we'd order $4,000 bottles of wine," Pratt said in a magazine interview.
"Heidi was going to the mall and dropping $20,000 to $30,000 a day. We thought we were Jay Z and Beyoncé," he added. Pratt also dropped a cool million dollars on a crystal collection.
Reality TV regulars to TikTok
Throughout the 2010s the pair took part in a number of other reality shows, including I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, Celebrity Big Brother and Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars. For the last several years they have pivoted to social media, with Pratt building up an unlikely following through posting videos of himself feeding nectar to hummingbirds around his home. He also sells crystals online and shares daily videos of his life on Snapchat.
When the couple’s $2.5 million home was destroyed in Palisades wildfires earlier this month, Spencer took to TikTok. In one video he holds up a big paper bag and says: “When your house burns down and you have nothing… There’s only one thing that can maybe make you feel better: a bag of bagels.”
Pratt’s videos are full of gallows humour and self-deprecation. His follower count quickly burgeoned, and when he hit a million followers he joked: “Who would have thought all I needed was for our house to burn down to finally hit a million. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner.” His follower count has since doubled to 2 million.
When some TikTok users suggested he was rich enough to afford losing his house, Pratt hit back: “Ever since The Hills was cancelled, everything on social media and Google I’ve ever read about myself was that I’m a broke nobody. But then it takes all of our possessions and our house burning down, and now in all my comments section everyone’s like, ‘What are you crying about? You’re a rich celebrity.’ My gosh. What a rebrand! please everyone update my Google alerts, and that celebrity net worth thing that said I’ve been worth a thousand dollars for the last 15 years. I’m enjoying being called a rich celebrity.”
An unlikely musical comeback for Heidi — and redemption
Other fans have been more sympathetic. When they asked what they could do to help, Pratt asked them to stream Heidi’s album, Superficial, which she made in 2010. “Heidi and I had money in 2009, and we used it to buy the Superficial album and own all the masters and put all our money into it, hoping at the time Heidi would be a global pop superstar,” Pratt said. The album was a flop at the time, but Heidi’s single Superficial has soared to number one on the iTunes charts, beating Bad Bunny.
A GoFundMe page for Spencer and Heidi has received over 4,000 donations and raised $140,000 at time of writing. Meanwhile, Pratt says he is now making around $4,000 a week from his TikTok videos and has received further donations through TikTok live.
While spirits seem to be high in his TikToks, Pratt admits that things have been hard. “I’m still like, trying not to cry every 10 minutes,” he told the DeuxMoi podcast this week, before saying he has big dreams for the future. “I will become an A-list, rich celebrity and I won’t stop until Heidi’s a Grammy winner”.
The pair are among 20 homeowners suing the city of Los Angeles over its management of local water supply, claiming that it made the fire “inescapable and unavoidable”.
