The Hills: New Beginnings was canceled in January after two seasons
The Hills: New Beginnings’ cancellation is still on Audrina Patridge’s mind.
Five months after the Hills revival was pulled from the air, Patridge is opening up exclusively to PEOPLE.
“After the last season of New Beginnings, we were in the six-month waiting period to find out if we were getting another season or not. But we couldn’t go to another network or do anything else until MTV made up their minds,” she says while promoting her new Kast Media podcast, Was It Real? The Hills Rewatch. “So, we just had to wait around for six months.”
After not hearing back from the network for a while, the 37-year-old mom of one says the cast “kind of figured” the show was being pulled by the time they got the news.
The Hills: New Beginnings was canceled by MTV in January after two seasons. It was a revival of the 2000s MTV hit centered on Laguna Beach star Lauren Conrad and costarring Heidi (Montag) Pratt and Whitney Port.
Patridge credits the OG series created by Adam DiVello (Selling Sunset) with having “a formula that worked.” And while she thinks the new producers “did a great job,” she still feels they didn’t fully understand “what The Hills was back then.”
“It wasn’t about fighting and screaming and getting drunk all the time. It was about real friendships, and love, and relationships and a dysfunctional family. I just feel like that formula was lost and we were all over the place for a minute,” continues the To the Hills and Back Again author. “We had to re-shoot for six months. We redid a lot of things on The Hills: New Beginnings because nothing was flowing like it used to. So, it was a journey, but we gave it a shot and we all did the best we could. And I think it just kind of ran its course.”
Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag Pratt, Justin Bobby, Audrina Patridge, Brody Jenner, Mischa Barton
CR: Ellen von Unwerth/MTV
MTV is currently rebooting the franchise with a younger cast — a move that blindsided the OG cast was blindsided, and Patridge tells PEOPLE the network still hasn’t reached out to discuss the shakeup.
“We haven’t heard anything from them,” she adds. “We’re on the outs.”
Still, Patridge had many positive experiences during her time on The Hills — so much so that she’s revisiting the series with former costars Brody Jenner and Frankie Delgado as co-hosts of the podcast Was It Real? The Hills Rewatch.
As they watch all six seasons of the reality series, the trio will spill on what really went down while making The Hills. They are also inviting producers, former cast members and some celebrity fans to join them for the fun.
“We are not holding back at all,” she says. “There’s lots of laughs, lots of teasing, lots of behind the scenes. We’re giving the scoop on every episode of deleted scenes, things that have happened and each scene, maybe it happened differently but they edit it together in that way.”
Patridge adds, “So, we actually have producers on from the old Hills that come on, and they kind of give us their side and why they did that.”
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