On the ‘Laguna Beach’ reunion, this former love triangle is back for nostalgia, not drama

It feels like a relic from a bygone age of simplicity: an entire season of reality TV hinging on the social lives of a group of unpolished teenagers. They gossiped, cried, partied and fought. They worried about college admissions and which shade of polish to choose at the nail salon. They cast longing looks from across the room.

That was “Laguna Beach.”

Series creator Liz Gateley had just started working at MTV in 2003 when she pitched an unscripted series following a real group of high schoolers in Southern California.

“The logline was, ‘90210’ and ‘Heathers’ meets ‘Dawson’s Creek,’’’ because we knew we wanted music to be a big part of it,” Gateley said. “We didn’t know it would be the phenomenon it became.”

Shot more like those glossy dramas than a reality series, every “Laguna Beach” episode opened with Hilary Duff’s “Come Clean” playing over the sun–kissed credits and a title card that let viewers know “the people, the locations and the drama are real.”

For the most part, they were.

At the heart of the first season was a quasi-love triangle between on-again, off-again Laguna Beach High School couple Stephen Colletti and Kristin Cavallari, and Colletti’s close friend (possibly more), Lauren Conrad.

When the series premiered on MTV in 2004, it became an instant (and controversial) hit, made millennial household names out of Cavallari, Colletti and Conrad, and led to the spin-offs “The Hills,” “The City” and “Newport Harbor.”

Now, 10 original cast members, including those stars, have reunited for “The Reunion: Laguna Beach” premiering Friday on the Roku Channel. (The special was originally planned to coincide with the cast’s 20th high school reunion in 2024 but is now loosely timed to the anniversary of the show’s 2006 finale.)

Hosted by actor Casey Wilson, the reunion is an upbeat, feel-good affair, highlighting some of Season 1’s most memorable moments and faces. Cavallari, Colletti and Conrad all served as executive producers and wielded a degree of “creative control,” Colletti said.

“We didn’t want it to be this dramatic, ‘Housewives’-type reunion,” Cavallari said. “We wanted to do it for the nostalgia.”

Ahead of the reunion’s premiere, Colletti and Conrad, both 40, and Cavallari, 39, convened for a lengthy interview with The Times at a beachfront hotel restaurant in Santa Monica. Nestling into a corner booth with the trio felt like sitting with the cool kids you’d only ever watched from afar.

Yet, the three — even Cavallari and Conrad, who were pitted against each other in the 2000s — were warm and chummy, cracking jokes and enthusiastically agreeing with one another.

They’ve come a long way from their high school drama. Conrad has returned to Laguna Beach where she and her husband, the Something Corporate guitarist turned attorney William Tell, are raising their two sons. Cavallari oversees a lifestyle brand in Nashville and shares three children with her ex-husband, the former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler. And Colletti recently appeared on “The Traitors” and stars in the upcoming second season of the comedy “Everyone Is Doing Great.” He and his wife, NASCAR host Alex Weaver, are currently expecting their first child.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How did the reunion come about? Did anyone require convincing?

Cavallari: I credit Stephen for all of this, because the [“Back to the Beach”] podcast [co-hosted by Cavallari and Colletti] was his idea, and then from there, the reunion.

Colletti: When I first called Lauren about it, she was like, “Alright, I have a few questions.” You didn’t shoot it down right away, but you could tell there were some things that we needed to work through for this to make sense, and rightfully so.

Conrad: For me, just the idea of bringing cameras back into my life was very nerve-racking, but we were all executive producers. We all had a say, so we felt like we had a bit of control, which, in the past, we haven’t.

Conrad, Colletti and Cavallari are all executive producers on “The Reunion: Laguna Beach.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The “Laguna Beach” producers chose your high school for the show in 2003 and then began selecting interested students to star. What do you remember about your applications?

Cavallari: I just remember trying to make myself stand out. I was competitive. I didn’t even have the foresight to be like, “Do I want to be on TV?” It was more like, “I want to win this thing,” like I’m competing to be on TV. Everybody was vying for it.

Colletti: I remember doing some of the interviews [with the producers], and I’m freaking mumbling. I’ve got this pineapple hair. I’m trying to be like Freddie Prinze Jr. I didn’t know who I was.

What was your understanding of what being on reality TV entailed?

Conrad: Well, they put together a package for us. They had filmed for maybe a week, and they showed it to us and our parents before we signed on — and that was pretty different from where we landed.

Cavallari: It was more PG. No real drama, more like a documentary.

Colletti: No s— talking.

Conrad: Just like, “What’s it like to live in a beach town?”

Cavallari: I remember my dad being like, “Well, this is going nowhere. They’re really boring.”

When did you realize that your love triangle was going to be the central storyline of Season 1?

Cavallari: Pretty quickly. In my [audition] interview, a lot of the questions were geared toward it. Obviously, once we started shooting, we got a pretty clear idea.

Colletti: They started to hone in on certain things, or they fed our friends a question to ask us.

Cavallari: I remember having to be very careful about what I said — but not careful enough because I didn’t think about editing. I was just like, “Well, if I don’t say it, what are they going to do?”

Conrad: A look says it all. They’ve admitted to me that in the pilot, at the hotel, they used a scene where I’m looking at a tray of food, and they made it look like I was looking at Stephen.

Lauren and Kristin, you don’t ever really speak face-to-face on “Laguna Beach.” Were there more interactions happening at that time that we didn’t see?

Conrad: No, that was it.

Cavallari: We really did not.

“I have a lot of respect for Lauren, and I think it’s been really nice to get to know this version of her, as adults, as moms, as business owners,” says Kristin Cavallari about her former castmate Lauren Conrad.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

You two share a really mature conversation in the reunion. How have your perceptions of each other changed over the years?

Cavallari: I have a lot of respect for Lauren, and I think it’s been really nice to get to know this version of her, as adults, as moms, as business owners. We have a lot more in common than I ever thought. I’m just really thankful that we can close this “Laguna Beach” chapter this way. It does feel really therapeutic.

Conrad: I echo everything you said. So much time has passed and pretty quickly after the show ended, we sort of squashed everything, but we’ve lived separately and we don’t see each other ever. So, this was a nice excuse to do it on camera because I think that actually is meaningful for people who were invested in that storyline to see — you grow up and you move on and these things are not that important.

The fashion on the show was pretty iconic during that era. Were you putting much thought into your TV outfits?

Conrad: Not in Season 1. I had to buy all my own clothes, so I’m mostly in a C&C tank top and Miss Sixty [jeans] that I saved up for. It’s all the same outfit, I’m just reversing tanks.

Colletti: For me, it was board shorts all the time. In Season 2, for some reason, we started wearing sports coats over hoodies. Not good.

Cavallari: I wish I cared more in Season 2. That was my senior year, and I was over high school in general, so that carried through to the show and my appearance. Maybe that was part of the appeal, as well. There was this innocence with us just being normal kids.

There were no false lashes or full faces of glam.

Conrad: Oh no, no, no. A lot of it’s, like, last night’s eyeliner.

Cavallari: I always had a zit.

Conrad: Oh, yeah, I know! Not for you, but for me. My skin wasn’t very good.

The cast in 2004, from left: Lo Bosworth, Trey Phillips, Kristin Cavallari, Lauren Conrad, Talan Torriero, Christina Schuller, Morgan Olsen and Steven Colletti.

(MTV)

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You were all 16 and 17 when you were cast on “Laguna Beach.” Were there any discussions around, “Be mindful of what you do on camera,” or “This might follow you for the rest of your life”?

[All laugh]

Cavallari: Honestly, no.

Colletti: The only media training that we got was like 30 minutes before the VMAs [Video Music Awards] in Miami right before [the first season of] the show was about to air. They’re like, “If anybody asks, it’s all real.” That’s what we were told. “Don’t say this. Say this,” and “Good luck.”

The show was more tame than most of today’s reality TV, yet there was a lot of on-camera underage drinking.

Cavallari: Oh, yeah. A lot.

Conrad: [The producers] were very aware. They couldn’t buy us alcohol, but they were aware we were drinking.

Did anyone ever step in and say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be filming these teenagers in an inebriated state”?

All: No.

Cavallari: I don’t even remember it ever being a conversation.

Colletti: There was a moment where producers said, “You know you guys are underage, so you can’t be drinking.” But they said it so casually and while the cameras were rolling —

Conrad: — Oh, liability.

Colletti: Yes. I actually felt for a moment, should we put [the drinks] away? And everyone’s like, “No, dude. It’s fine.”

Cavallari: In no way, shape or form was MTV ever pushing it. We were just naturally doing that, like most high school kids back then.

Conrad: On “The Hills,” they had to start filming morning scenes of us hungover because they showed so much drinking. They were like, “We have to show the consequences of drinking.”

Gateley noted that the “Laguna Beach” producers “would have, for sure, stepped in if anyone was not safe.”

Kristin, during the reunion you said that you didn’t realize saying “no” to the producers was an option. What would you have done differently?

Cavallari: I don’t regret anything, it just never crossed my mind. Maybe because I’m a high school kid, and I have these adult producers saying, “Hey, show up here and do this,” and I just assumed that was what I was supposed to do. I wised up later in my reality TV career, but not for a while.

Conrad: I remember [castmate] Lo [Bosworth] used to say no to a lot of stuff. She’d be like, “I’m just not going to go,” and I was like, “I don’t think we can do that!” I was very like, “I signed up, I need to show up.” I can’t remember ever saying no. I questioned stuff sometimes, like the voiceover. I would reword stuff because it would feel a little harsh.

Colletti: They never forced anything on us, but when you’re 17 years old and you’ve signed this contract with MTV, you felt that responsibility.

Cavallari: I realized too that they were going to get what they wanted no matter what, whether you put up a fight about a line or not.

Conrad: I went into the [production] office once and they had a storyboard on a big wall. I realized we were only halfway through the wall, and there was a card like, “Story continues.” I was like, “Oh, my God, what’s going to happen? What comes next?” It felt very “Truman Show.”

In a memorable Season 1 episode, the teens journey to Mexico to spend spring break in Cabo San Lucas. While there, they get drunk at a club. Kristin gets close with another boy and dances on a bar, while Stephen repeatedly yells that she’s a “slut.”

The first Cabo episode —

Colletti: It looms large.

Stephen and Kristin, how do you look back on that now?

Cavallari: We were so young. At 17 and clearly being intoxicated, my go-to was to pop off. So, when I watched it back, I was proud of myself for trying to remove myself from the situation. I can totally appreciate what Stephen was going through. Not everyone has a camera in their face at age 17, and we had to grow up in front of an audience.

Colletti: I had fully locked that away. I don’t even know if I even watched it all the way through [when it aired]. But, ultimately, it boils down to just not [being] proud of the way I acted.

I look at it feeling sorry for us, for those two kids, that this is an embarrassing moment that’s on camera. You wish it’s not there for them, but at the same time, look how far they’ve come from that time and that moment.

Did MTV show you the episodes before they aired?

Conrad: They came the day before.

Colletti: Sometimes, strategically, I think that they ended up arriving the next day. It was like, “Oh, we didn’t get it in the mail to you on time!”

Were they on DVD?

Conrad: VHS! [Executive producer] Adam DiVello bought me a VHS player for my dorm in San Francisco so that I could watch them.

When the show premiered, did your lives change instantly?

Conrad: It felt immediate for me. The first week I arrived at college, [MTV] came out with these posters that said, “They really are this rich and beautiful.” That was the tagline. And I was, like, at art school. I never got to have a college experience because pretty immediately it was like, “Oh, I’m that girl.”

Colletti: The irony is, I wanted to do the show to no longer conform to the trends of high school. I made the choice to go to San Francisco State because not a lot of people from Laguna were going there, and then [everyone] saw this version of me on the show. It was a lot to process — people in the dorm trying to take pictures of you when you’re walking to the shower, or guys at parties trying to fight you just because you’re a guy from a reality show.

Cavallari: I was sort of in a bubble still being in high school. Life felt fairly normal, but then they would call me and be like, “Hey, we need to get on a plane tonight to be on ‘TRL.’ tomorrow.”

The castmates say their lives changed after “Laguna Beach” aired: “It felt immediate for me. The first week I arrived at college, [MTV] came out with these posters that said, ‘They really are this rich and beautiful,’” Lauren Conrad, far left, says.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

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Do you remember what you bought with your first paycheck? It was around $2,000 for the whole first season.

Conrad: I bought a pair of Chanel sunglasses.

Cavallari: I bought a little Chanel purse. I think that was probably the second season, though.

Colletti: I blew it on some golf clubs. I’d always had hand-me-downs from my brother, so the fact that I could buy new golf clubs, I was on top of the world.

Cavallari: I would have done the show for free. I was like, “We’re going to get paid for this?!”

Would you let your kids be on a reality show when they’re in high school?

Cavallari: No, I would never let them do a show like we did. Those are such precious years. When you graduate and you turn 18, that’s one thing. But while you’re a kid, just be a kid.

Conrad: If we were going back and doing it during the time we did it and in that environment, maybe it’s a conversation. Now, with social media, I would have a hard time letting one of my children do it. It’s just so much pressure.

Colletti: I’ve got this master plan of telling my kid that his dad was on a TV show that was really cool back in the day. And then, when he sees his dad on it, he’ll be like, “It’s not cool. I don’t want to do what Dad did.” It’ll deter him or her.

Why do you think “Laguna Beach” continues to resonate?

Colletti: It represents a very specific time in society, and it was [showcasing] kids who were not trying to become famous. The whole fame machine that is reality TV these days, we really did not think we were getting ourselves into that.

Conrad: Nowadays, people do a show and they’re like, “This is going to kickstart my career.” I was looking to make some connections in the fashion industry, but besides that, I wasn’t looking to create a brand or do any of those things. We didn’t seek it out.

Are there any other paths you’d like to pursue that you haven’t? [“The Hills” star] Spencer Pratt is running for L.A. mayor — any chance you’ll have a political career?

Cavallari: No. I feel pretty fortunate that I’ve been able to do a lot of really exciting things over the years. I feel pretty content.

Conrad: Me too. I worked so hard in my 30s. I wanted to do everything, but I’m in a place where I’m so lucky to have my family, and I just want to be present for them.

Colletti: I’m excited to become a dad. It’s such an exciting time. Everything feels right where it should be.