No one is immune to the Reality Reckoning, not even Kristin Cavallari, the original unwitting reality TV villain of the early aughts masterpiece, Laguna Beach. For those of you who weren’t parked in front of MTV from 2004 to 2006, Cavallari was the foil to Lauren Conrad’s “good girl” as they both navigated young adulthood in their elite Californian beach community, with all of the love triangles and fashion faux-pas that entailed. After Laguna came The Hills, where Cavallari’s alleged villainous ways were overshadowed by those of the wonderfully wicked Heidi Montag. But that didn’t mean Cavallari’s life wasn’t forever changed.
“I think I walked away from Laguna Beach thinking that I was the only one MTV messed with and I got the shitty end of the deal, and I took everything so personally,” she told Bustle in a recent interview. But she realizes now that “They fucked with everybody.”
“We were very young to have our lives manipulated like that,” she continued, then adding a surprising perspective: “I’m not complaining about it. I’m so thankful for the show. I think it can be both things—I can feel like we were taken advantage of, and I can also be thankful for it.”
I’ve never heard it put that way before, and I’m inclined to roll my eyes at the millennial “positivity and gratitude” thing. But she explained how seeing herself on the show at such a young age—she was 17 when it started—helped her find herself, if unnaturally.
“It definitely made me be like, ‘I am not that girl on TV, but if there’s even a slight part of me that is, I know that I don’t want to be that.’ So maybe it actually was a blessing in disguise and made me be a nicer person in general.”
It’s still kind of eye-roll-y, but she sounds sincere. And she wins more points from me for rolling her eyes at the “Reckoning” thing, and knowing that having a union or some kind of protective contract at the time wouldn’t have made anything better. “Everything has worked out the way it’s supposed to, and it’s gotten me where I am today. So no, I wouldn’t change a thing,” she explained.
“My celebrity could go away tomorrow and I would be really happy. I want to work for two or three more years and literally be done and then open up a coffee shop in a little beach town just for fun…I’m not going to be in Hollywood. I’ll be done. I have a set amount of money in my mind, and then I’m done working. I just want to live a chill life. I’ve been grinding since I was 17, and I’m tired.”
Not that I’m a huge fan of hers or anything, but this just goes to show that when stable, sane people are on reality TV, they can walk away and remain stable and sane. Abuse and manipulation are not inherent to the genre. At the end of the day, it all comes down to casting.