Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was on the downslide in 2011. He’d been a tabloid sensation in the decade prior thanks to his villainous four-season run on MTV’s reality series “The Hills,” and his ratings-boon relationship with co-star Heidi Montag. By the 2010s, the spotlight was fading and it seemed as if Pratt might slip into obscurity.
He was jobless, broke and living at his parent’s vacation home in Santa Barbara. He told the Daily Beast that he was considering going back to USC to finish his political science degree, but asked, “What real job — what political world — would want Spencer Pratt, with the stigma I’ve attached to my name?”
The political world of 2026, of course.
Pratt is following in the footsteps of those before him who’ve leveraged their reality TV fame into political careers. Predominantly Republicans, they occupy the Oval Office, or serve as the secretary of Transportation, or have run as a California gubernatorial candidate.
Pratt, a registered Republican, has now become part of the reality TV-into-politics pipeline, entering the L.A. mayoral race against incumbent Karen Bass and L.A. City Council member Nithya Raman.
Pratt announced his intent to run one year after his home was destroyed in the 2025 Palisades fire. Frustrated by the red tape holding up the rebuilding process, Pratt is running on a message that L.A. is broken and only he can fix it — somehow. He has no experience in public office.
Pratt does, however, have an edge on his competitors in one category: He knows how to amass attention.
For those who did not grow up consuming reality TV in the 2000s, Pratt was the medium’s No. 1 villain, a polarizing figure who understood that in reality TV — and later, on social media — being hated could be just as profitable as being loved.
Pratt joined MTV’s “The Hills” in 2007, making a name for himself as the confrontational boyfriend of cast member Heidi Montag. His agitating and manipulation, which he would later concede was primarily staged, drove a wedge between Montag and her friend, the show’s star Lauren Conrad. The friends’ falling out became one of the biggest events in 2000s reality TV, Pratt became the genre’s favorite love-to-hate figure and the couple, Speidi (as he and Montag came to be known), were a tabloid obsession. They played to the paparazzi, vamping at high profile events including the Kentucky Derby and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and hammed it up in “caught off guard” moments at the supermarket or over lunch.
Pratt has since claimed that he was intentionally acting as a villain to gain fame, allegedly following producers’ instructions to act in a “despicable” manner. “We were all getting paid to be people we weren’t for so long that you stop — there’s no line,” Pratt told The Daily Beast in 2011, a year after he and Montag were removed from “The Hills.” “The gauge is gone. The gray area is gone.”
He continued, “We got so deep with how many storylines we had to do to continue the machine.”
The machine continues to run. Pratt has reportedly signed up for an unscripted series tracking his bid to be the 44th mayor of Los Angeles. Deadline confirmed that production is already under way. The show intends to follow the candidate up to the June 2 primary then on to the November election if Pratt qualifies for one of the top two spots in a mayoral run-off, which seems likely at this point.
The spectacle of Spencer’s antics on “The Hills” drove ratings. But how that staged, arguably obnoxious behavior plays out in a political campaign, run by a man in his 40s, is another matter. “Obviously, Spencer suffered a real loss in the fire, and maybe that humanized him as he tapped into and/or exploited real anger people have toward the failures of governments to help them. But it’s not like he’s building off years of goodwill or “Apprentice-style” image rehabilitation and fictionalization,” says Andy Denhart, creator of realityblurred.com and president of the Television Critics Assn.
“Making your whole personality ‘I’m not an actor but I pretend to be a jerk on TV’ may get you a gig on ‘House of Villains’ but [it] doesn’t contain a lot of authenticity for fans to connect with.”
Voters, however, are another matter. The pundits thought it was inconceivable when Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency in 2015. But Trump by then was familiar to millions as host of “The Apprentice” and like Pratt has a knack for dominating the attention economy even when the PR is not favorable.
Familiarity is appealing, and so is a built-in narrative. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, was known for kicking butt as “The Terminator.” To casually engaged voters who wanted a fighter from outside the system, he (or rather his character’s on-screen persona) fit the bill.
“We have this voyeuristic society where we think we know people, so that’s translated into knowing your politicians,” says Christina Bellantoni, a former Los Angeles Times editor who is now a columnist with Roll Call and director of USC Annenberg’s Media Center. “You remember the old question of ‘Would you have a beer with that [candidate]?’ Well, you don’t need to have a beer with them because you’ve already seen them at their worst [on reality TV], whether that’s competing for something or fighting and throwing food at each other across the table or eating rice out of a banana leaf.”
Pratt, who grew up comfortably on L.A.’s West Side, rose to fame with the “The Hills” but struggled to maintain celebrity status after the show ended in 2010.
Pratt and Montag tried to regain their mojo in 2013 when they competed on the British version of “Celebrity Big Brother,” then returned four years later to compete on the series again. But their on-screen currency wasn’t what it once was. Reality TV had moved on from spoiled 20-somethings tearing each other apart to new ventures such as “90 Day Fiancé” and “Dance Moms.”
Social media, however, and its cabal of influencers operate along many of the same lines as their reality TV forebears. Push conflict, drama, and personality above all else and eventually no one will ask what it is exactly it is that you do beyond posting. You’ve amassed a following, and that’s the end game.
Pratt has used his online presence to tap into and exploit grievances about Bass, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, L.A.’s homeless population and the aftermath of 2025’s devastating fires. He’s also reposted AI-generated videos made by supporters, one in particular showing himself as Batman poised to save the city from the aforementioned Democratic politicians (they are depicted as spoiled elites, a la Marie Antoinette). It’s Pratt’s most viral “campaign” video to date.
Like other reality TV- and social media-made politicians who’ve moved into politics, Pratt is proficient at reinventing himself and grabbing attention. But what about his ability to govern?
“Politicians are recruited in lots of different ways, but let’s say that now we have reached an era in which part of the recruitment process is based on their ability to engage with new social media platforms,” says Stuart Soroka, a professor in the Departments of Communication and Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Does that produce a group of people who are more or less capable of managing the very different things you need to do in Congress? I think the consensus would be no, that it produces people who are less able to function, in part because such a big part of Congress is about cooperation, which is not incentivized in social media platforms. I can certainly see a tension between what supporters might want to hear on social media and what that person would need to do in Congress.”
Or in the Mayor’s office.
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