It only took 18 years, but Kristin Cavallari and Lauren Conrad, aka two-thirds of the Laguna Beach love triangle that preoccupied many a millennial’s life in the mid-aughts, have reunited. They’re now back together for an apology-filled conversation that should finally squash the Team Lauren/Team Kristin rivalry once and for all.
In case you haven’t been keeping up, Kristin and her high school ex-boyfriend Stephen Colletti have been co-hosting a Laguna Beach rewatch podcast called Back to the Beach. It’s been surprisingly enlightening thus far, as they’ve revisited Season 1 of the MTV reality soap and spilled on what was “real” and what wasn’t (spoiler: a lot wasn’t).
On the latest episode, which dropped Tuesday morning, the pair reunited with Laguna and The Hills fan-favorite lead Lauren, aka LC, to talk through all their high school drama. Lauren, of course, was Laguna’s Season 1 narrator and the angel to Kristin’s devil (at least, according to MTV’s savvy editors), who pined for Stephen amid his tumultuous, on-again off-again relationship with Kristin.
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But apparently all that’s in the past now, because Kristin and Lauren kicked off the conversation by cheerfully reminiscing about going to a house party in L.A. post-Laguna.
“We had so much fun together! I just want everyone to know: We’ve had a handful of really great times together,” Kristin said.
Lauren agreed, telling Stephen, “As soon as you left, it was great.” Kristin concurred: “You were the problem, Stephen!”
According to the three of them, Lauren and Kristin had gotten into a fight at a school dance, shortly before MTV showed up at their high school to cast and film Laguna Beach. Everything had been more or less smoothed over by the time the cameras started rolling, but the producers apparently took the Lauren-versus-Kristin storyline and ran with it.
“My take on it is, you and I never really had any beef,” Kristin said to Lauren on Back to the Beach. “Obviously there was a little truth to what happened with the three of us, but I felt like MTV coming kept it alive and made it way worse than it ever would have been.”
“I think it was done when they started filming,” Lauren agreed. “This is what I remember: I remember everything happened and then was it Formal? It was like the week before they started filming, we got into it and then made up. … And it was fine. And they came and… I don’t think we were best friends, but we were fine.”
“We never had an issue with each other,” Kristin said, to which Lauren countered, “I mean, we had an issue with each other, but it had been squashed.”
The two then rehashed all the drama that happened during the gang’s spring break trip to Cabo, where Kristin drunkenly danced on top of a bar, while Stephen jealously looked on and repeatedly called her a slut before turning to Lauren for comfort.
“My biggest regret watching it, I called you a slut. I’m so sorry,” Lauren said to Kristin, after explaining that she had recently rewatched some Season 1 episodes in full for the first time. “I couldn’t believe I did that. Because I think where I’m at now, I would never call another woman that, or girl. And it was for me the most embarrassing moment, like, oh gross.”
“Well, thank you,” Kristin said. “I called you a slut in a later episode and I was going to apologize to you also. … I said some really dumb stuff. And my thing is, when I watch it now, I’m like, I wasn’t confident at all. I was actually so insecure, and I took it out on you in a lot of ways. And I am sorry for that, because I said some horrible things.”
(It should be noted that Stephen did, thankfully, apologize profusely to Kristin in an earlier episode of Back to the Beach, after they’d rewatched the Cabo episode. Because he surely shoulders some of the blame there.)
Lauren then added: “In watching this, we were all so judge-y [about] you. I was doing the exact same thing all week.”
“Thank you!” Kristin replied. “That was my thing, I was like, I was not the only one dancing on a bar.”
When asked how she thought she was portrayed on the show, Lauren—who currently runs a clothing line and is living back in Laguna Beach with her husband and kids—spilled some tea about how she wasn’t just pathetically pining over Stephen her entire senior year of high school, despite what we saw on TV.
“I think they took a small piece of me and used it. Like I’m often kind of off in a corner just, like, creepily watching you guys, which is kind of embarrassing,” Lauren said. “And the thing that’s funny is, Season 1 was basically our senior year. And I had several boyfriends during this time. Which I’m like, I feel so bad for them if they ever watched this. They were like, ‘oh man, she’s just going after this guy.’”
When Kristin noted, “They really hammered the love triangle home,” Lauren agreed, saying, “They really did. They didn’t want me to have anything else.”
Stephen later chimed in, saying, “It’s completely tilted because you’re the narrator and [Kristin and I] are wild and it’s this hurricane. And sweet Lauren, you guys need to root for her.”
Among other juicy tidbits from the episode were that throughout filming Season 1, Lauren was apparently “hooking up with Talan [Torriero],” to which Kristin exclaimed, “We all were!” Elsewhere, Lauren and Stephen laugh about how they dated for two weeks in the seventh grade; Lauren roasts herself for layering her tank tops (who among us?!); and they all agree that Trey Phillips came out the best of any of them. They also tease the possibility of planning a bigger event for the 20-year anniversary of the show, which would be coming up in 2024.
Before then, however, Kristin and Stephen confirmed they’ll be back to recap the second season of Laguna on Back to the Beach after a short break. Thus far, their Season 1 recap episodes have included guest appearances from former cast members Phillips, Christina Schuller, Morgan Olsen, and Dieter Schmitz—plus series creator and executive producer Liz Gateley—so we’ll be patiently awaiting news on who will join them for the second batch of episodes.
And luckily, the first two seasons of Laguna Beach (we don’t acknowledge the disappointing third season in this house) will be conveniently hitting Netflix this Friday, Nov. 11, so there will be plenty of time to binge-watch before Kristin and Stephen keep going baaaaack… back to the beginnnnnning.
