When Laguna Beach premiered in 2004, no one had really seen a reality series that followed the actual daily lives of high schoolers. Watching Lauren Conrad and her friends hang out, date, party, and get ready for the adult world was so much fun, and it felt like a very innocent show since not many like it had been produced. The fashion and hairstyles were very early 2000's and the pretty scenes of the beach helped create an overall vibe.
Lauren Conrad has done it all and the Laguna Beach star even launched a clothing line for kids. She may not have moved on from Laguna Beach drama, but she is well knwon for starring in reality shows. It's a big question: was Laguna Beach real or fake? Let's investigate.
Updated on December 12th, 2022, by Abigail Thomas: While Laguna Beach may have been one of the first of its kind, the world of reality television has certainly spread its wings. Some of the most popular television shows on networks and streaming services are reality based. However, the public has known for a long time that reality television does not necessarily mean one hundred percent real. Laguna Beach is no different, especially when taking into account Kristin Cavallari's horrible experience with her boyfriend while on the show.
Was Laguna Beach Scripted?
Though most fans agree that Laguna Beach did not age well, the reality show was still highly popular in the 2000s and had a dedicated fan base. Like with all reality shows, fans wonder if the show followed a script or if it was totally authentic.
Laguna Beach was real in the sense that Lauren Conrad and her classmates/friends were really living their lives on camera. They were the ages that they said they were and they really were a friend group.
But there are some things that fans of the show should be aware of. There was a lot of editing and producing on the show, and that proves that it's not 100 percent real. The cast has since revealed that the show was "softly scripted" and that "MTV had an angle and they made sure they obtained that."
In an interview with TV Guide, Liz Gateley, "The Hills became such a phenomenon, such a success story that it almost became a caricature of itself because of Heidi and Spence. Laguna was not manipulated and we did not ask the cast to do things. In the editing, we definitely ratcheted it up. If Kristin said something nice about someone, we would edit it out. We wanted her to be the bad girl. That's what you do in reality producing. But we told an authentic story."
Gateley also said that the show was created in a "highly stylized, highly directed way, and highly scheduled way."
Producers Told Laguna Beach Cast What To Say
Kristin Cavallari shared that producers were heavily involved when the cast was filming Laguna Beach. It sounds like according to her, the producers were so involved that things did feel forced and fake, so it's interesting to get her perspective.
In an interview with Us Weekly, Cavallari said, “We never got an actual script, but they would text us what to say so that to people around us, it would just look like we were looking at our phones, and then we’d talk about whatever." She also said it was "tough" and “We didn’t realize how much we were being manipulated or put in situations that we wouldn’t normally be in.”
According to Ibitimes.com, Cavallari said that while there was no script, they were actually told what to chat about with one another. She said, “It was pushing it as far as it would go without an actual script. They give you a schedule and you’d have lunch with Heidi at 3:00 to talk about the party coming up or whatever the situation may be.”
Kristin Cavallari Uncomfortable Filming Laguna Beach
Cavallari has been vocal about not being happy about filming the show and she has gone into detail about things that were fake about the show. According to ET Online, she said that she and Stephen Colletti were in a relationship and that the producers wanted him and Lauren Conrad to date because it made for drama on the series.
Cavallari said, "Basically, my boyfriend at the time [Stephen Colletti] -- producers would have him go and take out Lauren Conrad -- take her to dinner, bring her flowers, which never would have happened if it wasn’t for the show, for MTV."
The reality star, mom, and creator of Uncommon James also shared that being a teenager on a reality show was super tough. She said that she cried once she watched the pilot and "I felt like they were really trying to take advantage of me, and it was a really difficult time for me, so when I saw it on air, and saw how they represented me, I was really, really upset." She explained that she had trouble facing her feelings since she was so young and to be considered the bad girl or "villain" on the series was tricky.
It's tempting to want every reality show to be 100 percent real, but that doesn't seem to be possible with the majority of these series. Producers sometimes give stars an outline of what they should have a conversation about and they know how they want a scene to look. In the case of Laguna Beach, the young stars really were living a fabulous California life, but some of the relationships and arguments were not necessarily the real deal.
This idea of "fake reality" television shows is still very common today. Even the most popular reality shows, such as The Kardashians with all their family drama, have been accused of being scripted. With streaming services like Netflix stepping into the reality show scene, producers and executives are just trying to be as successful as possible. Success is dependent on the amount of drama in reality television.
