While Stephen Colletti hooked up with both Kristin Cavallari and Lauren Conrad on “Laguna Beach,” he insists he wasn’t seeing them both at the same time — despite what may have been suggested by the MTV reality show.
Both Colletti and Cavallari have been taking a look back at their time on the show in a recently-launched Back to the Beach podcast and, in this week’s episode, he addressed and shut down any and all speculation he cheated on his cohost with the other main star of the show.
As they talked about the show’s fourth episode, Colletti told listeners that MTV would often set up a “timeline” that’s “their world and not actually what’s going on in real life.” He and Kristin then reminded everyone how in this particular episode’s “Previously on” narration from Conrad, she said Stephen went “running back to Kristin” after an LC hookup … before Cavallari was seen flirting with another guy.
This overall setup rubbed both of them the wrong way, as they claimed the edit took things out of context or played around with the timeline to make him look like a cheater and her look like a major flirt.
“That’s just s—ty,” said Cavallari of her edit. “Even if they could show a little bit of my real personality, they still had to throw that dagger and make it seem like I was the bad guy.”
“100%. I had a huge problem with that scene as well,” added Colletti, saying editors made it look like she was always “out there trying to find other guys,” even when in a relationship. He then addressed any speculation he stepped out on Kristin with LC, shutting it down once and for all.
“I had a huge problem with this because obviously they created this show around this love triangle and there’s moments where you and I were broken up,” he explained. “And they had learned about Lauren and I hooking up and being very good friends and, you know, obviously stuff happened at certain times, but at no point ever whenever we were together would I step out on you in that way.”
“They really paint that, of course, as what I’m doing throughout the show, which I have a huge problem with,” he added, claiming some of his words were also twisted to make it look like he was telling his male friends that he would be a “good” guy by not cheating again — when, in reality, he meant he was “good,” as in “ready” and “prepared,” to date Kristin again.
“That made my blood boil a little bit,” he added.
Both Kristin and Stephen said MTV wouldn’t “stray” from hammering home certain personality traits for the entire cast throughout the first season. “They decided ‘OK, this is how we’re gonna make Stephen look and I don’t care what’s really going on in his life,” said Kristin, as they both said Conrad’s voiceovers and “previously on” montages played huge roles in crafting certain storylines.
“They really crafted the storyline in a way that made audiences really engaged,” said Colletti, who added that they were all very “naive” when it came to common reality show editing tricks like splicing together conversations to “create a storyline that fits their narrative.”
Though Stephen admitted they were “definitely messy at times,” he expressed frustration they had no way to fight back against storylines being crafted on the show as it aired. “You get the tapes three days before it airs and you can’t do anything about it. You don’t have publicists at the time, you can’t do jack s—. You were so helpless,” he added.
“They got so lucky that we didn’t have social media at that time because you know I would have been all over that thing going ‘This didn’t happen here’ and ‘That’s not true,'” said Kristin with a laugh.
She added that she was really looking forward to revisiting episodes from the show’s second season, to see whether they were more aware of what was going on after seeing the edit for Season 1.
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