It would be funny if it wasn’t tied to something so tragic: the redemption arc of Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag over the last week.
In what’s become the most unexpected celebrity plot point of this still early 2025, and a surreal simmer from the wildfires raging in L.A., the OG reality TV duo — Genesis for millennials — find themselves more relevant than they’ve been in an eon. Spencer, they’re calling “husband of the year,” and Heidi … a pop star, at last?
In a nutshell: they lost their house but won fresh relevance.
The exact chronology? It goes like this: after seeing their home destroyed (but fortunately getting out safe, their two kiddos OK), Spencer started milking social media in order to help rebuild their lives, doing his version of “on-the-ground” reporting, while earnestly asking people to stream Heidi’s 15-year-old dance-y album, “Superficial” (panned back in 2010; their coupledom, forged on the pseudo-soap “The Hills,” making them an object of scorn and tsk-tsk).
Well, it worked. By last weekend, “Superficial” had officially hit No. 1 on iTunes.
“Who would’ve thought all I needed was our house to burn down to finally hit a million? Can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner,” said Spencer on his TikTok. Darkly ludicrous, but wryly real.
It’s what has led to a torrent of renewed affection for the duo sometimes known as “Speidi” on social media, and even shout-outs from some of their old castmates (i.e., Brody Jenner, who famously went to school with Spencer, the son of a Pacific Palisades dentist). Add to that a mountain of press (“The Enduring Resilience of Heidi and Spencer,” headlined Glamour) and even calls for another show, (“If some network doesn’t give Spencer and Heidi a reality show about rebuilding their lives after this fire — you are literally leaving millions of dollars of advertising handed to you by every millennial in America who will watch it,” chimed Meghan McCain).
Along the way? Spencer has emerged as a kind of content creator savant — doing TikTok in a way that feels, yes, “real” (that elusive concept) and even gonzo (in that Hunter S. Thompson sense). Something he honed over the last several years, selling crystals (he’s obsessed!) and going all out with his hummingbird videos (HummingbirdTok is thing). What’s now led him to becoming a kind of hashtag-era, basketball shorts-wearing Joan Didion for the catastrophe in California.
Marketing pro Hilary Krueger explained just how, when she recently posted about Spencer’s genius:
“1. He doesn’t give a F.
2. He’s documenting. We keep coming back to be updated.
3. He is selling unapologetically. He is plugging his wife, Heidi, without a care in the world.
4. He is authentically himself.
And so many other things. It’s just … so good. I’m invested.”
“Thirsty” before that term was a thing, fame-hoarding in a way that so many thought was yuck, Speidi have not only stood the test of time (people thought their wedding was fake back on “The Hills”!), but also lived to see the re-evaluation that the writer in Glamour now offered: “Perhaps Montag and Pratt were never ‘villains’ … but just two people who manifested fame, achieved it, and ecstatically relished in it the whole way through …”
Perhaps, Spencer and Heidi were “Brat” all along, in the Charli XCX meaning of the word.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” this week, the two got tearful discussing their tragedy. “Spencer was like ‘Grab anything you want to keep,’” Heidi shared. “And I was like, ‘How do you choose?’ You know? My brain stopped working because I was so overwhelmed … so I grabbed my kids’ teddy bears.”
“The worst was like our kid’s room that was so magical,” Spencer added, recalling the experience of watching the fire unfold on their cameras. “We do story time each night, it’s like our routine, so much love is in there …
“I feel like a ghost,” he continued. “I don’t have a single photo now from before an iPhone existed. I don’t have any of the dumb little things that are on your shelves in your parents’ … they’re all gone. Not a single nothing.”
A cold splash of reality for a pair of reality vets — because how do you get more “real” than all this? And quite the epilogue for a duo that got famous in a show set in a prehistoric, presocial media L.A. — beautiful, vapid youngsters doing beautiful, vapid things, all set to a filming style of “Antonioni-esque plotlessness and dreamy cinematography,” as was once described.
The red-hot sun of a saga that began when Heidi and LC (Lauren Conrad) were besties until, well, Spencer, came along, upturning an entire friend circle and leading to one of the great feuds of the last 20 years, and one of the most quotable, too: when LC told Heidi, “I want to forgive you — and I want to forget you.”
Forget? Nah! Not now. “Now can we talk about how Spencer was the reason ‘The Hills’ grew into the iconic show it became? Are we ready for this conversation?” asked one poster on Threads.
“SNL, hear me out,” suggested someone else. “Host: Spencer Pratt. Musical guest: Heidi Montag.”
Indeed, the way I see it: these two now sit there with one of the great, didn’t-have-on-our bingo-cards, aughts-era turnarounds — right next to Pamela Anderson suddenly becoming a make-up-scrubbed, serious actress Oscar contender!
Lemon. Lemonade. Speidi-style.
